


Together at Ahch-To

by PurpleMollusc24



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Smut, soul searching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 19:22:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14479491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurpleMollusc24/pseuds/PurpleMollusc24
Summary: Kylo Ren and Rey agree a one month truce during which they will try to turn each other to their side of the Force. As they learn more about each other their feelings grow until they cannot be denied. But if neither will turn then their truce must end with a fight to the death...





	Together at Ahch-To

“The bombers will reach the Resistance position in nine minutes,” General Hux told Kylo Ren, swelling with ruthless excitement. “There shouldn’t be much left for the ground troops to mop up.”  


“Eliminate these villages as well,” Kylo Ren ordered, pointing to some neutral positions marked on the screen. “Their sympathies are with the Resistance. I feel it.” He broke off and frowned to himself, his gaze moving to the far wall of the flagship bridge as though something there had caught his attention. General Hux followed his look uncertainly. The General sometimes suspected that Kylo Ren was on the verge of losing his mind, an eventuality that Hux would welcome eagerly.  


“Sir?” Hux asked, unwisely. “Are you alright?” Kylo Ren flung out a hand to send him sprawling across the floor.  


“Carry on,” Kylo Ren ordered, striding from the bridge.  


He swept through the corridors to his quarters, barely noticing the troops who leapt aside and bowed, so focussed was he on the distinctive presence calling him. Rey. She inspired such a confused cacophony of conflicting emotions he wasn’t sure how he felt. However, he knew what she must be here for. She would be here to appeal to his better nature, to ask for mercy for the Resistance. She would leave disappointed.  


He knew the presence he felt was just a projection, but still when he opened the door of his quarters and saw her there a thrill of emotion washed through him. He took a moment to take in her bruised and bloodied appearance. The smear over her cheek was not her blood, Kylo Ren realised, and was angry with himself for feeling relieved.  


“I have come to discuss terms,” Rey told him stoutly. Kylo Ren turned away from her lest his face betrayed him. He crossed the room and poured himself a drink.  


“There are no terms,” he informed her darkly. “The Resistance dies today.” He felt her anger, her pain, her disappointment in him. It cut him, but he was determined not to let her see. If only she would embrace that anger she would turn, he was sure of it.  


“I won’t leave them,” Rey told him flatly.  


“I know.” As always he was bewildered why she chose inevitable death over the fantastic power they could wield together. The energy between them was almost tangible.  


Rey took a deep breath.  


“I have a proposition,” she offered stoutly. “One month. Delay your assault for one month and come with me somewhere far away from all of this. I’ll show you the Light Side, you show me the Dark Side. We can try and turn each other. At the end of the month maybe things will still be the same. Maybe it will end like this after all. But maybe it won’t.”  


Kylo Ren considered her offer, considered it carefully as she stood there staring him down without a trace of fear. If he didn’t accept it she would die today, perhaps within this very hour. And everything they could have become would be lost. A glorious future leading the First Order as Supreme Leader stretched before him. No one would pose a threat to him once she was gone. It was madness to accept her offer, and yet…  


“What makes you so sure I wouldn’t just order my fleet to destroy the Resistance while we’re away?” he asked coyly. “They won’t stand a chance without you to protect them.”  


“You wouldn’t do that,” Rey stated confidently. “I would make you promise.” Kylo Ren smiled mockingly.  


“You don’t know me very well.” Rey squared her shoulders.  


“What makes you so sure I’m not just trying to lure you away from your fleet so the Resistance can take you out?” she quipped sharply. Kylo Ren snorted with laughter. Perhaps they did know each other well after all.  


Rey became serious.  


“If we continue on this path, it will end with one of us dead and one of us alone. I don’t want that, for either of us. What do you want?”

 

Kylo Ren strode onto the bridge, black robes sweeping behind him.  


“Cease the attack,” he ordered General Hux brusquely.  


“What?” The man unwisely turned to challenge him and Kylo Ren hurled him across the room with the Force. One day Hux would outlive his usefulness, and Kylo Ren enjoyed sometimes fantasising about the options for disposing of him. Possibly flaying would come into it. And some kind of arachnids. Kylo Ren sensed the man had a phobia of them.  


“Cease the attack,” Kylo Ren ordered Hux’s deputy. He had no idea of the man’s name and didn’t particularly care.  


“Yes sir, right away sir.” Kylo Ren watched with some satisfaction as Hux picked himself up resentfully off the floor and limped over to make his simpering apology. Definitely flaying would come into it somewhere.  


“Fall back and set up a blockade around the planet,” Kylo Ren told Hux loudly enough so the whole bridge could hear. “A Resistance shuttle will take off shortly and you will let it meet with my shuttle. But after that nothing gets in or out until I personally give the order to attack.” He crooked his finger at Hux and strode off the bridge. “I am going on a strategic mission,” he told Hux as they walked together to Kylo Ren’s personal shuttle bay. “I’ll be away for a month.” As so often happened, General Hux unwisely demanded to know more, but lucky for him Kylo Ren needed him in one piece to give an appearance of leadership and continuity while he was away. They reached Kylo Ren’s personal shuttle just as Hux was getting into his stride about the utter devastation they could wreak on the Resistance in a matter of minutes.  


“Do not forget my orders,” Kylo Ren said meaningfully, hitting the button to pull up the ramp. “I will hear of it.” He flung out a hand and ripped Hux’s ears from his head with the Force. He knew the medic droids would sew them back on easily, but the man’s scream was gratifying nonetheless.  


Kylo Ren suspected that Rey would demand he leave his shuttle somewhere after they met up in case the First Order could track it, but he thought he could persuade her to let him keep his lightsabre. After all, she would want to keep hers. As the shuttle’s autopilot guided it smoothly to the hanger doors, Kylo Ren pulled open a secret compartment behind the control panel and selected a smooth, thick disc from inside. It attached snugly to the end of his lightsabre, indistinguishable from the rest of the handle.  


“The activation code is ‘Last Jedi’,” he said clearly, and a row of tiny lights flared for a moment around the disk as it beeped in acknowledgement. He spent the next few minutes ordering his thoughts to bury the secret of the micro-droid deeply. He didn’t want Rey plucking knowledge of his secret weapon from him in an unguarded moment.  


If Rey wouldn’t turn to the Dark Side, Kylo Ren wanted to be sure of victory.

 

Rey rested her hands on the stones of Luke’s old house, soaking in its peace and harmony.  


“What is this place?” Kylo Ren asked warily, coming up behind her. He was tense as if expecting an attack, Rey noticed, but not from her. Rather, he seemed to sense the presence of the many Jedi who had lived and died here over the centuries.  


“Somewhere we won’t be bothered by the First Order or the Resistance.” Rey turned and smiled reassuringly.  


“I feel his presence here,” Kylo Ren grumped.  


“Master Luke won’t bother us.” Rey waved to BB-8 to watch her shuttle and then set off through the stone buildings.  


“I’m not sure he would approve of your plan,” Kylo Ren pointed out sourly as he followed her.  


“I can handle him,” Rey assured him archly.  


A bizarre creature loomed suddenly out of a doorway. Kylo Ren was beside Rey in a moment, his lightsabre drawn, and Rey flung out an arm instinctively and threw him back with the Force, sending him sprawling across the stone path.  


“He’s just a bit hasty,” she assured the squat guardian, whose eyes were bulging in alarm. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone. Or any walls.” Kylo Ren pulled himself to his feet and brushed the dirt from his robes with a scowl. “Yes, I know I don’t have the greatest track record on that. No, we don’t want any milk.”  


When she had managed to calm down the guardian Rey motioned Kylo Ren to join her at the stone altar in the centre of the village. She placed her lightsabre inside a snug alcove in the stonework and looked meaningfully at Kylo Ren until he did the same.  


“Either of us could break that open in an instant,” Kylo Ren pointed out sourly as she lowered the stone lid over their weapons.  


“Don’t you have symbols on the Dark Side?” Rey challenged with a smile.  


“We take things quite literally to be honest,” Kylo Ren replied sardonically. “Join me or die, that kind of thing.”  


“Well lucky for you, you have me as a teacher,” Rey said sweetly. Kylo Ren scoffed.  


“You? You were never even properly trained!”  


“And yet I still beat you every time.” She flashed him a cheeky smile. “Anyway, I don’t need a teacher. I’ve got secret Jedi texts.”  


“Secret what?” Rey raised a smug eyebrow and walked off up the hill. “Well I’ve got secret Sith texts!” he yelled after her sulkily. He caught up with her a minute later. “You’re lying.”  


“Am not. Anyway, Jedi don’t lie.”  


“Yes they do!”

 

He stalked after her as she climbed the jagged peak that rose above the buildings. She clearly knew the path and raced eagerly ahead, but Kylo Ren took his time, feeling for threats. He trusted Rey not to play him false, but he didn’t trust Luke or the other phantom Jedi he sensed here.  


When he reached her again she was planted on the summit, breathing in the sea air with her eyes closed and a look of peaceful concentration on her face. Deeply in tune with the Force. He could sense her strength.  


“It’s cold,” Kylo Ren muttered, wrapping his black cowl more tightly round himself.  


“Ray of sunshine aren’t you?” Rey observed, opening her eyes.  


“I thought we were here to show each other the Dark and the Light Sides?” Kylo Ren complained.  


“We are. Can’t you feel it?” She gestured over the gleaming sea. “Every living thing. In harmony. How can you want to destroy this?”  


Kylo Ren frowned as he considered her question.  


“I don’t want to destroy it. I want to master it. Bring order.”  


“You want to dominate it,” Rey suggested without rancour, trying to understand.  


“Yes. I deserve to. All the beings here are weak. I am strong.” He looked across at her. “Like you.”  


“You don’t need to dominate to be strong,” Rey insisted. “There is strength in harmony and balance.” Kylo Ren cocked her a condescending smile.  


“This is your grand strategy?” he asked mockingly. “You’ll turn me by… what? Appealing to my better nature?”  


“Something like that,” Rey replied, matching his mocking tone. “Except you’ll do the hard work for me. Your deepest instincts draw you towards the Light Side, I feel it. All I have to do is get you to listen to yourself.”  


“You will be disappointed.” Kylo Ren looked out over the vista without really seeing it, concentrating on the patterns of the Force that underlay everything. “There’s something else here,” he realised suddenly, and Rey felt his mind’s eye move to that dark pool in the centre of the island. Kylo Ren was drawn there powerfully, as she had been. Unable to resist its magnetic lure. But unlike her he wasn’t seeking answers, he sought power.

 

“Ben!” she shouted, clambering down the hill after him as he scrambled away. Kylo Ren waited for her on the lip of the drop to the pool. “Don’t!” she urged him.  


“You said we would explore both sides of the Force,” he pointed out. “You’ve shown me the Light. Let me show you the Dark.” Rey bit her lip, but she felt drawn to the fairness of his argument and nodded unwillingly. Kylo Ren held out a hand to her with a compelling smile, but she shook her head.  


“I promised to let you show me the Dark Side. I didn’t say I would embrace it.” Kylo Ren’s expression closed. Without further comment he turned and leapt into the dark pool.  


“Ben!” She leapt after him. There was no thought in her mind except to make sure he didn’t come to harm, but when she clambered out of the water and found him in the dank cave staring into the rock mirror he seemed unharmed.  


“What do you see?” she asked, joining him.  


“My father.” Kylo Ren had been reaching for the mirror but his hand now balled into a fist. “Such as he was.” He looked aside a little, staring at something which clearly caused him pain. “And my mother. I was born to hurt her.”  


“No.” Rey clasped his shoulder, and at her touch Kylo Ren’s face twitched, his conflicted feelings ringing clearly across the space between them.  


“What do you see?” he asked. Rey shrugged, unwilling to say. “You promised we would explore both sides,” he chided her gently, raising an eyebrow in challenge. Rey squared her shoulders and took his place in front of the mirror. He stood close beside her, watching her face pale as she stared into it.  


“Only me,” she whispered. The words hung heavy around them. Kylo Ren resolved that if he ever found her scum parents he would tear them limb from limb for abandoning her on that godforsaken planet.  


He took her hand gently.  


“You don’t need to be alone anymore,” he told her. “Embrace the Dark Side and we will rule, together.” Rey turned away from the mirror to look at him levelly.  


“Never,” she replied firmly.  


“We’ll see.” He smiled a small smile. “We have a month, after all.”

 

“You lived on this stuff for months?” Kylo Ren asked in disgust, spitting out a mouthful of green milk.  


“Luke lived on it for years!” Rey smiled. “Which probably explains a lot, actually.”  


BB-8 whistled in agreement as it turned a skewer of fish over the fire. Dusk had fallen over the island and they were set up in one of the stone huts, a bedroll laid either side of the fire. Rey spooned some stew into a bowl and handed it to Kylo Ren, who peered at it doubtfully.  


“Sorry it’s not the high imperial cuisine you’re used to,” Rey drawled sarcastically. Kylo Ren lifted a spoonful of the stuff and watched it gloop ponderously back down into the bowl.  


“No wonder the Jedi died out,” he observed dryly. Rey snatched the bowl off him and began eating his stew with exaggerated relish.  


“It’s this or a lovely glass of milk,” she reminded him sweetly. Kylo Ren raised a hand and drew the bowl from her using the Force. Rey resisted, and for a moment there was a tug of war, the bowl hovering between them before she suddenly let it go and it clattered into Kylo Ren, splattering his chest with stew. Rey roared with laughter while Kylo Ren mopped himself up sourly.  


“I’m cooking tomorrow,” he snapped. “I’ll make you a Sith speciality.” His tone wasn’t entirely serious.  


“Let me guess,” Rey smiled. “It’s something black.”  


“You mean something strong.” Kylo Ren smiled a little as he dug a spoon into the remains of his stew. He liked this atmosphere between them. It wasn’t something he was used to, but it felt safe. It reminded him of Leia, he realised suddenly. She knew his power too, she knew his evil, but she still loved him.  


Kylo Ren felt confusion and anger crowd his thoughts. He wasn’t here to indulge in sentimentality. He was here to turn Rey. And the route to that was clear in his mind. She had been stranded alone on that planet for so long, of course she had latched onto the Resistance the minute they came along. But he could offer her an alternative. He would be a true equal, a true counterpart to her powers. They would achieve stupendous things together. And she would never be alone again.  


Neither would he. And that thought warmed him in a way he recognised but refused to indulge. Until he knew he wouldn’t need to kill her, he couldn’t afford to let his attachment get the better of him.  


“Are we sleeping here?” he asked her, nodding to the bedrolls either side of the fire. He let just a hint of suggestion creep into his voice. Not enough to put her guard up, but enough to tease.  


Rey threw a spoon at him.  


“Not everyone’s taken in by your lost boy look, you know,” she told him archly. Kylo Ren just smiled. He knew her better than that, but he would take his time. He needed to get this right. For both their sakes.

 

Kylo Ren woke suddenly in the darkness and for a moment lay tensely, testing the Force to locate the threat that had woken him. When Rey murmured again he rolled over and watched her. She was uneasy in her sleep, turning and muttering as she dreamed. Curious, he reached out with the Force. He meant only to get an idea of what troubled her, but was unprepared for the complete absence of mental barriers. Without meaning to he pitched straight forward into her dream.  


Hot sand hit him in the face and he rolled over, coughing. A pitiless sun glared down on him, and staggering to his feet he found himself gazing upon a featureless desert.   
Emptiness stretched in all directions. Not a breath of life. Except… There, in his shadow, a girl sat hugging her knees in the sand. Her face was streaked with tears but he would have known her anywhere.  


Kylo Ren crouched down slowly beside her. The keenness of her abandonment cut as deeply here as on the day Rey had really experienced it. The loneliness and rejection infused this place. Did she come back here every night?  


“You are not alone anymore,” he told the young Rey gently, reaching out a hand to her.  


A black shadow fell over them both. A masked figure loomed in front of the sun. And before Kylo Ren could say or do anything a burning red beam pierced through his chest.  


He woke with a yell at the same time as Rey. They lay in the darkness, collecting their wits for a moment.  


“Don’t spy on my dreams,” Rey growled.  


“Tell me your parent’s names,” Kylo Ren replied shortly. “I will send my best assassins to find them.” He clenched his fists. But Rey didn’t deign his suggestion with an answer.  


“Ben? Does Kylo Ren often kill you in your dreams?” She looked across at him.  


“I am Kylo Ren,” he told her, staring up at the ceiling. “And I rarely dream.” Rey sighed deeply.  


“I’m never going to get back to sleep,” she groaned, rubbing her eyes.  


“How about a nice glass of milk?” he offered, grinning across at her in the darkness. He could feel her smiling back.

 

Kylo Ren dumped his head into the water barrel and came up gasping from the cold. The bright morning light was streaming over the island and as he towelled his hair dry he could just make out Rey jogging along one of the paths that criss-crossed the peak above the stone huts. He stood watching her for a moment before pulling on his shirt.  


“Any excuse to get your shirt off, eh?” a dry voice commented behind him, and Kylo Ren’s hackles rose as he recognised the phantom presence.  


“Still skulking here, Master?” Kylo Ren asked sarcastically, casting Luke a glare. He wasn’t afraid of the Force ghost, but he sensed the dead Jedi still had power, so kept a wary eye on him as he pulled on his cowl over his shirt.  


“This isn’t going to go how you think it’s going to go,” Luke drawled, leaning his translucent form against a wall.  


“We’ll see,” Kylo Ren replied lightly, giving nothing away. But as always, Luke made him angry. In the Jedi’s eyes, he would inevitably betray Rey’s trust. Luke didn’t understand he was trying to save Rey, to show her the magnificent path they could walk together.  


“So hasty,” another voice chided, a cracked and smiling voice. “Always so hasty, young Skywalker.” Kylo Ren turned in irritation to see the Force ghost of yet another Jedi. This island was infested with them! He had expected Luke to bug him, but surely the others had better things to do?  


“Master Yoda.” Kylo Ren nodded to him, recognising the squat green figure from pictures in the imperial archives. Such a legendary master deserved his respect.  


“Hmmm.” Yoda gazed at Kylo Ren eagerly as he leaned on his stick. “Think you, Luke, that already decided his future is?” Kylo Ren’s jaw set at the implication.  


“I have chosen my path,” he told Yoda with a flare of anger.  


“Hmmmm. Yes. Yes. Again and again. Always at a crossroads you stand.” Yoda leaned forward, his eyes bright as he looked beyond Kylo Ren to the paths he might walk. His next comment had the timbre of prophesy: “Uncertain, your future is.”  


Kylo Ren absorbed this in silence. He had no reason to believe Yoda’s words, but they spoke to a truth in him, and he allowed himself to accept it.  


“Like her,” Kylo Ren observed quietly to himself.  


“No.” Yoda shook his head gravely. “Clear, her path is.” He pointed a knarled green finger at Kylo Ren. “Know this, you do.”  


Kylo Ren gripped the sides of the barrel, his rage building, until with a bang the barrel exploded outwards, spraying them all with splinters and freezing water. Luke forgot he was already dead and ducked, but Yoda seemed unperturbed.  


“Then she will die,” Kylo Ren spat, breathing heavily. “Like all the others.”  


“Hmm.” Yoda’s voice this time was non-committal. “Difficult to see.”  


Kylo Ren kicked the remains of the barrel in disgust. Then he kicked them again. Luke watched him with arms folded as he stormed off.  


“She doesn’t see him for what he is,” Luke told Yoda for the umpteenth time. “We need to help her defeat him.”  


“Our help, she does not need,” Yoda replied firmly. His essence began to fade in the brightening morning light. “Come here to learn, he has. Like many before.” Yoda gave Luke a somewhat chastening look. “Failed him, we did. But a wiser teacher, he has now.”  


Luke shook his head as Yoda faded. If his old master wouldn’t do anything, he would.

 

As she was wont to do Rey paused in her morning jog to drink from the fresh spring that gurgled from one of the rocky crevasses of the island. The stream was cool and wonderfully refreshing, and she wiped her mouth and gazed out over the vista of the sea, feeling the peace of this place nestle deeply in her bones. She hoped Ben felt it too.  


A presence resolved itself behind her, drawing form from the energy of the life around them. She frowned and took another drink without turning around.  


“Not even a hello?” Luke asked sarcastically.  


“I know why you’re here,” she said shortly, filling her water bottle. “You’re wrong.” She stuffed the bottle in her pack and set off on her jog again.  


“Hey!” Luke shouted irritably after her. “I was a Jedi master you know!” Rey jogged to a rope bridge that crossed a deep ravine on the island. Luke’s ghostly form was waiting for her, leaning on one of the bridge posts.  


“I used to think I was omniscient too, you know,” he pointed out acerbically. “Then I grew up.”  


“You gave up on Ben years ago,” Rey told him defiantly, jogging past him. “I won’t make the same mistake.” She made her way up to the island’s peak and was unsurprised to find Luke waiting for her at the rock she usually sat on for a few minutes to catch her breath. Luke wiped his forehead with a handkerchief in exaggerated exhaustion.  


“You'll be the death of me!” he exclaimed with a nasty grin. Rey threw herself on the rock beside him and took a swig from her water bottle.  


“You know, sometimes I understand why he tried to kill you,” she said irritably.  


Luke became serious. “Please,” he appealed quietly. “I can’t watch him destroy you like the rest of my students.” Rey took another drink and said nothing, but she didn’t walk away again. “Can’t you see what he’s doing? Deceit and manipulation are the Dark Side’s way.”  


“I know there’s that side to him,” she admitted honestly. “But it isn’t the only side. He has a choice. And so do I. I choose to trust him. It’s the only way to bring him back.”  


“The Jedi Order was known for their trust too, Rey. They responded to violence with understanding and compassion. And they all died. All of them.” Rey stood and looked down at him calmly.  


“You see only the past,” she countered quietly. “But I see his future and a different path is possible. For both of us.” Luke started to argue again but Rey was done with the conversation. “Maybe you don’t know as much as you think you do.” She turned away and continued with her run.  


Luke watched her go angrily. Why did no one else see the danger? The fate of the whole galaxy hung in the balance and Yoda was prepared to trust in this little girl’s crush! Luke’s face hardened. He was going to have to take matters into his own hands. He had failed to destroy Kylo Ren during his lifetime, but death had given him a second opportunity.

The sun was warm on Kylo Ren’s face as he threaded through the crevasses of the island looking for Rey. They had lived together in this ancient temple for more than a week, and on each morning she had started the day with a jog around the island. Today, she was late back.  


When he had reached out to check she was alright he had sensed she was angry about something and was regaining her focus through some kind of practice. He had set off to find her, curious to know how she honed her skills. Cresting the hill he found her deep in concentration as she practiced moves with her staff. For a moment he closed his eyes and just felt the Force moving with her. It leant power to her blows, resilience to her blocks. She was as much a part of this island as the twisting wind and the solid bedrock.  


Kylo Ren felt his spirits drop. The power that the Dark Side gave him came from the burst of fury and hate that usually underlay his attacks. It was nothing like this. His anger was not endless, but the balance that Rey could tap into was. Perhaps that was why she had beaten him when they had crossed blades in the past.  


Rey finished swinging her staff around and wiped her brow, noticing him for the first time.  


“Come to pick up some tips?” she teased. “That’s cheating you know.” Kylo Ren smiled to hide his thoughts.  


“Maybe.” He held out a hand and summoned a staff from the village. “Would you indulge me?” The staff flew into his hand and he pointed it at her, the wind sweeping over the grass between them.  


Rey looked doubtful so he baited her a little.  


“Perhaps you can land a blow or two to avenge the Jedi I’ve killed?” Her expression hardened and her stance lowered. They paced in a circle, watching one another closely.  


Kylo Ren expected she wouldn’t attack first. Her naïve wish for harmony would hold her back. That was his first mistake. He had barely any time to react as Rey suddenly leapt across the space between them with a yell, her staff cleaving the air. She landed a glancing blow on his head and he stumbled backwards, dazed.  


Rey stepped a few paces back and leaned on her staff, lips pursed in a satisfied smile. She had the feeling that somewhere a bunch of ghostly Jedi were punching the air.  


Kylo Ren shook himself and gathered his strength, his anger rising in a tide of darkness. With a roar he leapt forward, whipping his staff at her head. They fought then in earnest. The Dark Side stormed through his every blow, while the Light leant strength to every block and parry of Rey’s. On and on, evenly matched, matching blow to blow, until finally they broke apart and both retreated a few steps to catch their breath.  


“You would be even stronger…” Kylo Ren managed, breathing heavily. “With the Dark Side.” Rey cast him an angry look.  


“How can you say that?” she demanded, unconsciously dropping her guard. Kylo Ren surged forward and swept her feet from under her. The tip of his staff pressed against her throat.  


“That’s why you will lose,” he prophesied grimly. “No strategy.” Rey burst forward in a fury, throwing his staff aside and whacking him with her own. Kylo Ren sprawled back on the grass and looked up at her in shock.  


“That’s why you will lose,” she returned hotly. “I’m just stronger than you.” She threw her staff down in disgust and walked away from him. If he had wanted, Kylo Ren could have attacked then, could probably have killed her. But instead he pulled himself to his feet and set his own staff aside before going to join her.  


She was sitting cross-legged on the grass, the sea spread before her and her eyes closed as she meditated to replenish her spent energy. Kylo Ren threw himself on the grass beside her and thought back over their fight, trying to work out how he could have beaten her.  


“Do you know why I’m stronger?” Rey asked quietly, sensing his thoughts. “When you fight me, you’re also fighting yourself.”  


“Maybe.” But his train of thought then took him down a path Rey hadn’t anticipated. “But once you are turned and the Resistance is destroyed there’ll be no more conflict. I will reach the greatness I was born to reach, and fulfil my destiny.”

 

Kylo Ren burst into the hut that evening in an icy blast of rain and wind.  


“That storm’s as fierce as a rancor in heat,” he complained to Rey, pulling off his dripping cowl and hanging it by the door. Rey handed him a raggedy blanket to dry his hair but said nothing, and Kylo Ren sent out a questioning tendril of the Force, scowling as he sensed Luke in her thoughts. “Whatever he said about me is probably true you know,” he observed darkly. Rey dumped a spoon in the pot of stew and stirred it angrily.  


“I know you far better than he ever did.” Kylo Ren smiled a little at her anger. He poured some tea from the pot into two cups and handed her one, enjoying the flush that passed through both of them when their fingers touched. “He said I shouldn’t trust you,” Rey sighed. “He thinks I can’t see you clearly.”  


“He’s right. You shouldn’t trust me. And you don’t see me clearly.”  


“Have you kept your promise?” Rey asked suddenly. “One month’s reprieve for the Resistance while we’re here.”  


“I have kept my promise. You would feel it if they died.” But he couldn’t quite meet her eye, and she sensed that he was hiding something. She sent out a questioning probe with the Force and he blocked her solidly. For a moment their eyes met, both tensing for the explosive fight that must come.  


But then, astonishingly, Rey drew back.  


“I will choose to trust you,” she said quietly.  


“How can you be so foolish?” he demanded angrily. Would she let him destroy her without even a proper fight?  


“Why are you all so sure that I’m the foolish one?” she snapped, glaring defiantly back at him. “You live in conflict with your deepest feelings every day. You tell me to kill the past but you let yourself be defined by it. If it were up to you and Luke then history would just repeat itself over and over. Neither of you are willing to see there is another path!”  


She rose to her feet, angry with herself for the tears that were threatening, and stormed towards the door.  


“Rey!” he stood up quickly and blocked her way. “There’s a storm out there.”  


“Who am I kidding?” She sat down heavily and dropped her head into her hands. “You’ve chosen your path. You’ve killed so many people. You killed Han!” She rubbed her eyes angrily.  


Kylo Ren came and sat next to her.  


“There is peace to be found in the Dark, with me,” he suggested quietly. “You are in conflict too, I feel it.” Finally, she met his eye, and for a moment he felt her acknowledge the searing energy that drew them together. He opened his mind a little, let her see the deep longing she drew from him, let her realise how much he wanted to draw her into his arms and feel her strength merge with his.  


“Wow…” she breathed, and he felt her embrace that knowledge, tip head first into it. She longed so much for closeness, for belonging, for family, and she knew he could give her everything she craved. Kylo Ren drew her into his arms as she fell into his mind, deeper and deeper. She was turning! She had to be!  


Rey’s expression hardened and she pulled away from him. For a moment she just gave him a deeply cold look.  


“I guess Luke was right,” she said finally.  


“No,” Kylo Ren insisted. “You know what you mean to me.”  


“So this is your strategy,” she realised, bitterly. Kylo Ren didn’t see any point denying it, but he felt she was purposefully dodging the deeper truth.  


“There is nothing contrived about the way I feel,” he insisted. “We are two sides of the same coin, we were born to rule together. You have no idea of the power we could wield.”  


“And you have no idea how completely uninterested I am in that!” Rey yelled at him.  


“No,” he shook his head, smiling slightly. “I know you better than that. There’s a part of you that wants power. You want to feel safe, you want to show you’re not just a scavenger, you want to see how strong you can become. And we would rule well, Rey. You could rebuild the galaxy in your own image.”  


“You just have no idea,” she sighed, shaking her head. “How can you not understand?” She looked him in the eye. “I am never going to turn to the Dark Side, Ben. I’m never going to help the First Order rule the galaxy. I’m never going to command an army that terrorises and destroys wherever it goes. How can you not understand that?”  


Kylo Ren sighed heavily. She wasn’t the only one who was beginning to think things were hopeless. He needed a new strategy, he realised. He needed to make her angry. Really angry. She would turn, he was sure of it, if only she would channel the fury he sensed deep inside her.

 

Kylo Ren shook the cool water from his face and towelled his hair dry as he watched Rey jog away over the brow of the hill.  


“Do you ever actually wear that shirt?” Luke’s voice sneered behind him. Kylo Ren sighed inwardly and pulled it on. “So, those secret Sith texts you told Rey about,” Luke drawled. “Did you read them before or after you chose your look? Because I have to tell you, black on black has been done a lot, and I mean a lot.”  


“Is there a reason you’re here?” Kylo Ren asked irritably, setting off up the hill. Rey had taken her staff with her and he wanted to watch her practice to see if he could determine any weaknesses in her technique.  


“How many books are we talking?” Luke persisted, following him doggedly.  


“Just when I didn’t think you could be any more annoying,” Kylo Ren snapped, “you died.”  


“I just have more time to devote to it now,” Luke said brightly. “I don’t need to sleep, or breathe.” Kylo Ren stalked away.  


“Can you loan me those books?” Luke shouted after him. “I’ve got some time on my hands.”  


Kylo Ren had the feeling Luke rather liked being dead. It held limited responsibilities and gave him ample opportunity to be condescending and sarcastic. Once he’d left Luke behind, Kylo Ren slowed his steps up the hill. He didn’t want to arrive before Rey had finished her run and started her fighting practice. His thoughts turned to Luke’s words.  


Secret Jedi texts. Rey had mentioned them a while ago, but he’d seen nothing on the island like that. Perhaps they were hidden from him?  


He cast his mind out, searching not for the darkness as he usually did, but for a concentration of the light. There was Rey, bright in his mind’s eye. And shifting pulses that marked the phantom Jedi drifting in and out of this place.  


Oddly, it looked like some of the Force ghosts were concentrated in a particular area. He focussed on it. It was on the far side of the island, well away from the stone huts. Kylo Ren set off eagerly, feeling his way towards the concentration of energy.  


The trail took him to a cavern right on the coast. It looked like it had been formed naturally, he thought, but right in the centre hung a pile of… books! Kylo Ren raced forward eagerly. All the power of the Jedi! He would learn their secrets! No one would be able to stand against him!  


He raced across the rock floor, but his hand passed straight through the books just as his feet passed straight through the illusory floor beneath them. Down he tumbled, into the darkness. Rock walls scraped past. He flung out an arm to slow his fall with the Force, and landed in complete darkness on a cold, gritty rock floor.  


He stumbled to his feet, gazing blindly into the pitch darkness all around. He could hear whisperings, catcalls, threats right on the edge of hearing. Just as he tried to scan his surroundings with the Force a burst of freezing sea water slammed into him from the darkness, throwing him against a wall. Dazed and soaking, Kylo Ren floundered blindly, his hands scrabbling for purchase on the slimy rock wall until he manged to regain his footing. He could feel the freezing water subsiding around his knees, but the sound of pounding waves was there still, echoing through the darkness.  


“Did you think we would let you murder another one of us?” a shrill voice called suddenly from next to his ear. Kylo Ren flung a blast out with the Force, intending to hurl the speaker backwards, but his power hit straight into a solid rock wall that he hadn’t known was there. It rebounded and threw him painfully into another rock face. He crumpled to the ground, groaning, just as another wave blasted through the darkness, whacking into him and crushing him against the unseen rock wall. Coughing and choking, Kylo Ren managed to drag himself back to his feet using the wall. He tried to orientate himself in the darkness, to work out where the waves were coming from, where the walls were, but before he could concentrate enough to use the Force another voice screeched suddenly in his ear:  


“You are no match for all of us!” Kylo Ren whirled around and flung out a hand to hurl away the speaker, but again his power hit a solid wall. He smacked back painfully into a rock face, falling heavily to the ground just as another wave crashed in on him. This time he struggled to come up again. His limbs didn’t seem to be working properly. His head rang. Dazed and soaking and blind, he had no idea which way was up or down. The freezing water spun him around, banging him into unseen walls until it subsided. Sopping wet and head ringing, he spluttered weakly on the rock floor.  


He was going to die, he realised. His great destiny was gone. Luke and all his little sycophantic pawns would be his undoing.  


No. His grip tightened on the gritty rock floor. He was Kylo Ren! He was not going to be killed by these insignificant fools. How dare they even try! His anger leant him strength and he gathered his wits. They were using his power against him, he realised suddenly. They had none of their own, only their stupid voices and projections. Well he knew how to deal with that. He would ignore their wretched taunts and find his own way out of this place. And then they would pay. Oh, how they would pay.  


He stood up full of burning anger, the power of the Dark Side pulsing through him. He raised a hand to scan with the Force and another wave roared straight into him, smacking him against an unseen rock wall. His head burst with stars and his thoughts blurred. He was coughing and spluttering, floundering in the freezing water. The wave took much longer to subside this time. He had barely time to cough up the water he’d swallowed before another unseen wave smacked into him, slamming him against wall after wall in a pitch black whirlpool. He had to go upwards, he thought desperately. He had to get out of the path of the waves. But that was okay, he thought suddenly. The entrance was up there!  


Sodden and groaning with pain he managed to pull himself partly out of the water by scrambling blindly up a rocky wall. Gazing upwards, he spied with triumph a distant circle of light. The entrance he had fallen through! Kylo Ren gathered his powers. He would show them! He would get out of here and destroy them all, all over again.  


The darkness around him thundered suddenly with an approaching wave and he gathered his strength, channelling his anger to give an almighty push, a leap with the Force that would send him soaring back up through the hole he had fallen down. He took a deep breath and leapt from the floor with the Force, barrelling upwards towards the distant light. But the light was an illusion. His head rammed straight into the rock ceiling.  


Consciousness filtered back in painful, confused waves. He groggily realised he was being whirled around, his limbs and head smacking into things. It was cold, he thought dimly. He couldn’t move. He was drowning. He was drowning but couldn’t lift a finger to save himself.  


So, he thought dully, after all that effort everyone had been right all along. He was useless. Just as his father and Snoke had always said.  


A blast of light made him blink stupidly. There was movement above him, noises and colours. He was being dragged out of the water. It was painful. He tried to say something but he was coughing, coughing. It was suddenly bright all around. And he was clasped close against someone warm and dry. A flow of energy ebbed into him, warming and healing him, and he came to his senses gradually to find he was clutching Rey tightly, his sodden clothes dripping into the grass as the wind swept over them.  


“Are you okay?” Rey examined his head. Her fingers in his hair felt wonderful, like she was a protector of infinite strength and gentleness. “I’ll kill Luke!”  


“You should have let him kill me,” he managed. “You should have let him kill me, Rey.”  


Rey shook her head angrily.  


“When are you going to understand?” she demanded. And then she was kissing him. He sank under her kiss, lost himself. She was everything to him. She held all the power, all of it.

Back in the hut Rey hung his wet clothes beside the fire and tried not to look at him with only a towel on.  


“The tea’ll be ready in a few minutes,” she said brightly, busying herself by the fire. “You need to warm up.”  


“Rey.” Kylo Ren caught her wrist and drew her next to him. He looked her in the eye. “Please. Run. Everything he said about me is true.” Rey shook her head stoutly and Kylo Ren gritted his teeth in pain. Why couldn’t she see what was blatantly obvious? “I’ll destroy you!” he shouted. “If I can’t turn you then that’s the only way this will end!”  


“You think so?” she asked coolly. “You didn’t do too well the last time you tried.”  


“Take the shuttle and go. It might be years until I find you. There are plenty of remote planets where the First Order has little power. I promise not to look for you too hard.”  


He smiled wanly, and Rey took his head in both her hands and leaned her forehead against his.  


“Can’t you see that you belong with me?” she urged gently. “Not in darkness, but in light.” Kylo Ren’s whole face screwed up in searing pain as he felt his soul almost split in two. Everything light inside him yearned desperately for her. And much of the dark too, but for the wrong reasons.  


“I can’t walk that path with you,” he managed, forcing out the words through gritted teeth.  


“You can.” She leaned forward and kissed him again, kissed him long and deep, and for a moment he let himself go, drowned in her as he wanted to so desperately.  


But then he pulled himself back.  


“You’re doing the same thing I did,” he muttered bitterly.  


“I’m really not,” she sighed. She took his hand and held it between her own. “Take a look,” she offered. Kylo Ren blinked, not believing her. But when he cautiously probed her mind he felt no barriers. She let him in.  


And his breath caught in his throat at the well of raw emotion he tipped into. Overwhelmed, he would have collapsed if not for her hands holding him up.  


“You love me,” he gasped, utterly staggered. “Why?” He stared at her.  


“It’s okay Ben,” she sighed. “I know you love me too.” And she kissed him again.

 

 

Kylo Ren woke with a jolt, and for a moment froze as he tried to locate the threat that had disturbed him. But then Rey murmured in her sleep again and he turned over and drew her close. She had fallen asleep close against him after their kisses last night. Even through her layers of clothes he could feel her heart beating, feel her warmth, her life.  


Rey murmured again and shifted uneasily. He knew she didn’t want him to trespass on her dreams so he just held her close.  


“You’re not alone anymore, Rey,” he whispered in her ear, hoping it would penetrate to her dream.  


“Neither are you,” a cold voice sneered in his mind. A shot of fear raced down Kylo Ren’s spine.  


A few moments later he was out in the night, wrapping his cowl tightly against the cold. The presence was easy to locate, so darkly did it taint the ancient peace of the island.  


“So weak…” Snoke sneered, his phantom form seated in a ghostly throne above a high cliff. Kylo Ren absorbed the insult in silence, but it burned. Snoke had always known how to wound him. “Everything you might have become, you will let this nobody take it from you. You were always such a disappointment. I’m only glad I didn’t live to see your mediocrity reach its final pitiful conclusion.” Kylo Ren’s rage crested.  


“I am more powerful than any Sith who ever lived!” he yelled, not believing it for a second. “I killed you!”  


“Yes. Your one moment of blind luck. And then you turned your back on everything that is yours by right,” Snoke sneered. “You could have ruled the galaxy. Instead you’ll end as the whipping boy of some mongrel scavenger.” Kylo Ren burned with anger.  


“Don’t call her that!” he spat.  


“Why not? It’s true.” Snoke faded. “Why did I ever waste my time on such a useless, spoiled, mummy’s boy.”

Rey woke from her usual nightmare and realised Kylo Ren wasn’t lying beside her. She sat up, frowning as she searched for him with the Force.  


Her footsteps were loud in the dark cavern, waking Kylo Ren from his reverie as he stared into the stone mirror.  


“Ben?” She reached for his hand. His fingers twitched at her touch but he didn’t move.  


“I thought it was worth reminding both of us who I am,” he said tightly.  


“I know who you are.” Kylo Ren shook his head slowly, steeling himself for what must come.  


“You’re not enough, Rey. To turn me. Us. It’s not enough.” Rey dropped his hand and stepped back. Something in her reaction got through to him and he blinked. A wash of conflict spilled across his face. “I’m sorry.”  


Rey took a deep breath.  


“It’s okay,” she said softly. “I never thought it would be. And for the record.” She smiled thinly. “You aren’t enough either. I’ll never be with you if it means joining the Dark Side.”  


Silence stretched between them. Just a couple of paces separated them, but it seemed now a wider gulf than ever before.  


“So that’s it,” he said dully. “We fight.”  


“What? No.” Rey frowned. “We still have two weeks of the truce left. I’m not giving up on you yet.”  


“Rey…” he sighed.  


“I didn’t mean that. Even if I can’t turn you with my amazing good looks,” she grinned, “I know you can turn yourself. It’s them.” She pointed to the mirror. “They’re the key, aren’t they?”  


Kylo Ren sighed in exasperation.  


“Don’t you ever give up?”  


“You know the answer to that!” She grinned, and Kylo Ren smiled unwillingly back.  


“For the record,” he said dryly, echoing her earlier words. “I can see your path to the Dark Side too. All you need to do is channel all that anger you have.”  


“I’m not angry,” Rey protested. Kylo Ren broke out into a bitter peal of laughter. Once he had started he couldn’t stop. Painful mirth forced its way out of him, breaking the rigid tension he’d been under since Snoke’s visit.  


“If you’re quite done?” Rey growled after a while.  


“Sorry.” He wiped his eyes. “It’s just that you hide it quite well, but you’re just one of the angriest people I know.”  


“You can’t know many people,” Rey grumped as they walked out of the cavern into the bright morning sunlight. “I mean, you’re not exactly mister sociable.”  


“I’ll have you know I have loads of… minions,” he teased, as they walked down the hill towards breakfast.  


Rey smiled at him, and Kylo Ren felt the heat underlying that look. The energy still pulsed inside them, snapped between them, drew them inexorably together. It was madness to give in to it unless they were on the same side. Madness. And yet… Kylo Ren honestly didn’t think he could resist it for much longer. And he didn’t think Rey could either.

 

“How was your run?” Kylo Ren asked Rey, handing her a cup as she ducked through the hut door for breakfast.  


“Blessedly free of Luke,” she replied with a stretch. “Maybe he knows I’d rip him to shreds.” Kylo Ren grinned at that mental picture. What a pity Luke was already dead.  


“You know, the sexual tension between you two is palpable,” he teased dryly.  


“What?” Rey snapped. “Ew!”  


“Months alone in this place. No one else for company. You never, you know…” he grinned as Rey brandished her knife at him.  


“You are going to shut up. Now.”  


“I mean the beard might be a little itchy but – Ow!” he jumped as Rey smacked him on the head with her knife handle. “Okay, okay.” He obliged her and became serious. “So, are we   
back to trying to turn each other today?” He was keen to try out his plan.  


“Sure.” Rey demolished a piece of toast – or the weird grainy substance that passed for toast on this island. “Do you want to go first?”  


“You can.” He was curious to see what strategy she would try. And he suspected Rey wouldn’t speak to him for some time after he had his turn.  


“Okay.” She scooped up her bag. “Let’s go for a walk.”  


“You’re going to turn me by a cunning plan of walking?” he mocked as they made their way up the path to the island’s highest peak.  


“More like a cunning plan of picnics!” Rey replied with a grin, pulling a small plastic packet from her bag.  


“Is that candy?” Kylo Ren asked incredulously. “Where’ve you been hiding that?”  


“I’ve been saving it for a special occasion. And turning you definitely qualifies.”  


“Hmm, bribery,” he mused, pretending to weigh his options. “Either I rule the entire galaxy or I get to eat something that doesn’t stink of fish.”  


They made their way up to the jagged peak and Rey spread a blanket on the grass.  


“You should try and turn me more often,” Kylo Ren suggested, scrunching through his candy bar. Rey just lolled beside him, enjoying hers even more than he did. It suddenly occurred to him that the Resistance had been running and hiding for so long their rations must be meagre indeed. Who knows the last time she’d eaten something decent? Once she was turned, he resolved to show her the best food the galaxy had to offer.  


“Okay,” he said finally, setting the wrapper aside. “You’ve got me all relaxed and pliable. What’s your next move?”  


“I thought we could talk about your parents,” Rey replied matter-of-factly. Kylo Ren stared at her, his brows drawing together.  


“There’s nothing relevant to tell,” he snapped, more harshly than he had intended.  


“I don’t think so.” But she tactfully changed angle. “What made you turn to the Dark Side in the first place?”  


“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “It was obvious. I could be ten times more powerful. I was born to rule, not to follow Luke and his fawning proteges. When Snoke reached out to me it felt right.”  


“Why?” Rey insisted. “Why did it feel right?”  


“Is this really necessary?” Kylo Ren complained. “Can’t you just lecture me about, I don’t know, killing people and stuff?”  


“When Snoke offered me power I didn’t take it. But you did. Something in your childhood made you want it.”  


Kylo Ren sighed, realising she wasn’t going to give up.  


“Okay but once we’re done here, I get to make you really, really angry,” he demanded.  


“Deal,” Rey agreed, and waited expectantly. Kylo Ren shredded a blade of grass between his fingers.  


“Probably Han had something to do with it,” he offered unwillingly.  


“You never call him father.”  


“Because he wasn’t much of one,” Kylo Ren growled.  


“What about Leia then?” Rey suddenly looked away, distracted by a commotion amongst the huts far below. “What’s going on down there?”  


“When I said very, very angry,” Kylo Ren advised dryly. “I meant it.”

 

Kylo Ren grabbed Rey’s wrist to stop her just before they reached the huts.  


“Before you go in there, throw this as far as you can with the Force.” He dumped a stone into her hand. Rey crinkled her brow. “Just humour me.”  


She did as he asked, hurling the rock out into the glinting ocean.  


“Not bad,” he shrugged. “Let’s see how you do in a minute or two.”

 

“What’s going on?” Rey demanded of a guardian who had hurried out to meet her. The creature made some unintelligible noises and pointed to her shuttle. Rey pushed through the guardians who were milling outside gabbling to each other in alarm.  


“BB-8?” she called, making her way into the cockpit. “What’s going on?”  


That was when she saw him, or what was left of him. He had been torn apart, his innards scattered carelessly over the floor and his power source linked to the shuttle’s control panel. The panel’s lights were blinking, the screen showing the boosted signal reaching out all the way to the First Order fleet. A toneless voice was speaking over the intercom.  


“I repeat: Supreme Leader if you can hear me then I confirm we have received your orders.”  


Kylo Ren had followed Rey into the shuttle and now readied to defend himself from her revenge. He could feel her anger building, could feel the well of rage she usually controlled rising to the surface in a black and monstrous tsunami.  


“What did you do?” she demanded. “What were those orders?”  


“What do you think they were?” he replied coldly. Rey flung out a blast of the Force and he blocked her. For a moment they strained against each other, hands outstretched. And then gradually Kylo Ren felt her anger win, he felt his feet slipping against the floor as the strength of her rage overcame his defences. Back, he slid, back, until he was pinned to the wall. Her power pressed against his chest, suffocating him. He looked for a glint of mercy in her eyes but they were narrowed, ruthless, terrifying.  


His throat closed and his strength failed. He grabbed his neck, panicking, and her expression cleared suddenly. She lifted her powers and Kylo Ren crumpled to the floor clutching his throat.  


It took him a moment to regain his composure. Had he succeeded? Had she turned? He sent a questing tendril of the Force out to her as she cast around the cockpit, gathering the parts of her droid. No, she hadn’t turned. Her rage was still there, but she had pushed it down again. He sensed only grim determination in her now as she swept past without a word, her arms full of broken metal parts.  


For a moment Kylo Ren thought about letting her go. He had seen what the Dark Side would look like in her and it terrified him. But then he got a grip on himself. This was his chance.  


“Use your anger!” he yelled, following her out of the shuttle. “Don’t suppress it.”  


“I have nothing to say to you,” Rey growled, making for their hut.  


“Can’t you feel the power it gives you?” Kylo Ren insisted. When she didn’t answer he barred her way. “Use that power. Take your revenge.”  


Rey glared at him.  


“Get out of my way,” she snarled.  


“No.” Kylo Ren readied himself to summon his lightsabre the moment she summoned hers. “Think about what I’ve done to you. Embrace your pain. Embrace your anger. Unleash it.” Then, when she still didn’t move, “Hate me. Destroy me. It’s okay. I deserve your vengeance.”  


For a moment he felt her waver, felt her tempted by that cresting wave of darkness she could ride if she chose, sweeping everything before her.  


“I said get out of my way!” she yelled, and sent a blast of power at him. But it wasn’t an attack. The Force picked him up and hurled him in a confused tangle out into the sea.  


When he surfaced, coughing, and started swimming towards the shore, he realised she had thrown him farther with her anger than the rock she’d thrown earlier with the Light Side. That was progress, he supposed sourly.

Rey didn’t talk to him for the rest of the day. He tried baiting her a couple of times but she just flung him out of earshot. The worst of it was that the keen edge of her anger had dissipated now, replaced by a deep grief. The loss of BB-8 was tapping into something primal, he realised. It went back to her abandonment on that awful planet. BB-8 had been her first friend, her first step in escaping from that place.  


Even though she had only rudimentary tools she worked tirelessly to piece her droid back together. Kylo Ren eventually left her in peace to get on with it. His plan hadn’t worked, he realised. And much as that droid had been an annoying thorn in his side for some time, he didn’t want to hurt Rey any more than he had to.  


Days went past in this way. The island was deathly dull without Rey challenging and teasing him. And he missed her. It felt very lonely being shut out by her. Even when they had been fighting they had still felt connected somehow.  


Finally Kylo Ren decided enough was enough and went to confront her. She was most of the way through reassembling the droid by now, although it was anyone’s guess if it would turn out to be reasonably okay when it was switched on.  


“You’ve done a remarkable job,” Kylo Ren observed softly, crouching beside her as she rewired the droid’s eyepiece. For a moment he thought she would continue shutting him out, but instead she laid down her tools and regarded him thoughtfully.  


“I haven’t felt my friends die,” she said quietly, a question in her tone. Kylo Ren hid his thoughts and said nothing. “I assumed you had ordered the First Order to attack the Resistance, but you didn’t, did you?” He realised denying this was pointless.  


“It would have been a breach of our deal.”  


“You’ve never cared about breaching deals before,” she pointed out coldly. “The First Order double-crosses people all the time.”  


“It’s different with you.” He thought it unwise to gush emotion so he shared a logical reason. “When we rule the galaxy together, you must be able to trust me. When we make a   
deal, I’ll keep it.”  


Rey dropped her head into her hands.  


“Just shut up will you?” she sighed.  


“If you’ve given up on turning me then perhaps we should end the truce early?” he suggested quietly, though it tore his heart from his chest to do so.  


“I’ve not given up on you,” she sighed. “I’m just too mad at you to think straight right now.” That sounded promising to Kylo Ren. Perhaps he was getting somewhere after all. “Alright here’s the deal.” She fixed him with a solid glare. “You don’t touch BB-8 again. Or the guardians. Or anyone else. No more messages to the First Order. Not until the truce is over.”  


“Agreed.” He held out a hand but she was still too angry with him to take it. Kylo Ren knew he should feel pleased her anger was still so close to the surface, but instead it depressed him that he was the target.  


“You can have another go at me if you like,” he offered.  


Rey made a face.  


“Having a deep and meaningful conversation about your childhood is about the last thing I want to do right now.”  


“You could just lecture me for a bit?” he suggested. “That’s probably what Luke would do.”  


Rey didn’t deign that suggestion with a response. She stood up and stretched, feeling her muscles groan from so long hunched over her work.  


“You really didn’t kill the Resistance?” she asked.  


“You know the answer to that.” He looked her in the eye. “But one day I will, Rey. See me for who I am. Feel your anger. You should hate me. It’s okay.”  


“Come on,” Rey sighed, walking away from him.  


Kylo Ren caught up with her on the same stretch of coastline she had hurled her rock from using the Light Side of the Force.  


“Bet you can’t get yours as far,” she challenged, dumping a rock into his hand.  


“We could just whack each other with staffs again,” he suggested. “It’ll clear the air.”  


“Just get on with it,” Rey ordered. Kylo Ren gathered his power. This was his chance, he realised, his chance to show Rey how much stronger the Dark Side was than the Light. He drew on his anger, his hate, and channelled it into a burst of the Force, hurling the rock with all his might.  


“Not as far as mine,” Rey observed coolly.  


“What? That was way further than yours!” Kylo Ren argued hotly.  


“Now try without the anger.” Rey dumped another rock into his hand. “See how far you can throw it without all that conflict in the way.”  


“Can’t we just have another picnic?” he complained.  


“If you want another go at turning me, first you have to give me a go,” she snapped.  


Kylo Ren made a half-hearted effort to oblige her, throwing the rock with as much power as he could muster without delving into his usual well of emotion. But he knew it was impossible. He couldn’t properly draw on the Force without anger and hate. They were indivisible for him.  


“I’ll give you that one,” he observed dryly, as the rock flopped with a dull thud onto the beach.  


“You’re not even trying!” she growled at him.  


“Yes I am, actually,” he snapped back at her. Because I don’t want to have to kill you, he thought but didn’t say out loud.  


“Why would you?” Rey turned away in disgust. “You want the Dark Side. You chose it.”  


She was close to giving up, Kylo Ren realised. Part of him was relieved. Her pointless attempts to turn him had been a distraction from his true path. But part of him felt deep loss. Despite his best efforts he would lose her once the month was done. They would lose each other.  


“I want another chance to turn you,” he asked urgently. “You’re close, Rey. I feel it.”  


“You know that’s not true.” She looked out bleakly over the sea, and Kylo Ren felt her keen sadness as strongly as his own. It still astonished him that she cared.  


“Isn’t it worth a try?” he insisted softly. “The alternative is to give up on the truce and fight each other.”  


“Okay,” she agreed. “And I want another try too. But I can’t face it today. Let’s have the evening off.”  


“Good idea.” He tried for levity. “I’ve been dying to sample the delightful entertainments of Ahch-To.”  


“What do Sith do for fun then?” she asked as they strolled back to their hut. As Kylo Ren thought she would be disgusted by the answer he deflected her question.  


“Never mind me, what do Jedi do for fun? You’re all so stuck up and serious.”  


“You can talk!” she laughed. “With your swirly cloak and look-at-how-evil-I-am mask!”  


“Actually I don’t wear that mask anymore.”  


“Figures. You just want to show off your glossy curls I bet.” They swapped grins. Kylo Ren was glad they were friends again, or whatever this was. He knew it couldn’t last but that   
just made it more precious.

“I’ll match your offer to wash the dishes,” Kylo Ren said as he frowned at his cards, “and I’ll raise you cooking dinner tomorrow.” Rey raised an eyebrow mockingly at him over her own hand of cards.  


“Only one night’s cooking?” she goaded him. “I’ll raise you three.”  


“You’re bluffing,” Kylo Ren smirked. “Just fold already.”  


“Let’s see you then.” They laid down their cards and Kylo Ren groaned.  


“You’re surprisingly good at lying for a heroic saviour of the people,” he observed dryly.  


“And you’re surprisingly bad at it for a scheming dictator,” Rey countered.  


“This game is stupid anyway.” Kylo Ren tossed his hand aside.  


“You’re such a sore loser,” Rey teased. “I thought you’d like something with loads of bluffing. Don’t your lot have a grand tradition of stabbing each other in the back?” Kylo Ren thought about this as Rey gathered up the cards.  


“It wouldn’t be like that for us,” he said seriously.  


“Speak for yourself,” Rey quipped. She wasn’t being serious, but still her comment made him think. From what he had seen so far it was a reasonable possibility that if he ever did succeed in turning her, her first act would be to destroy him.

 

Kylo Ren found himself on the bridge of his flagship, a severe expanse of gleaming black and white that stretched endlessly in all directions. It was empty of life, as it always was. And as he always did he walked uneasily forwards, his footsteps unnaturally loud in the silence. Fear crackled up his spine. Who would stalk him tonight? Darth Vader perhaps. Or Snoke. Or his father.  


He felt a dark tide rise behind him. A relentless step stalked him, a pursuer he knew he couldn’t escape or overpower.  


“So weak,” his pursuer sneered. And the shock of that voice made him turn. It was her! Rey! But not the Rey he knew. Her face was twisted with hate and her black robes swept the floor as she stalked him.  


She raised a hand and a vice-like grip wrapped itself around his throat. He kicked out uselessly as his feet left the floor.  


“So weak!” the dark Rey laughed.  


“Get off him you bitch!” another voice snapped, and a wash of the Light Side blasted past Kylo Ren to hit the dark Rey in the face. As she staggered back Kylo Ren fell to the ground, gasping. “Come on you.” Warm arms shook him gently and he looked up into a familiar face. “Wake up.”

 

Kylo Ren woke with a jolt. He lay for a moment catching his breath before looking across at her in the darkness.  


“I didn’t spy on your dreams,” he complained. “Well except for that one time.”  


“Well now we’re even,” Rey returned. “And hey, you were keeping me awake with all your thrashing around.”  


Silence fell while they processed what they’d just experienced. Kylo Ren expected her to try and get him to talk about the meaning of it all, but instead she just reached a hand across the space between them. Kylo Ren took it, savouring the flush of heat as their fingers touched.  


“You’re not useless,” she told him firmly. “And I’m not her.”  


“I know,” he replied, but they both heard the doubt in his voice.  


There was a crumple of blankets as Rey rose from her bed. He didn’t quite realise what was happening until she had climbed in beside him.  


“This is a really bad idea,” he managed, though it cost him dearly to say it.  


“You’re telling me!” she grinned. She wrapped an arm around him and snuggled close, closing her eyes. Kylo Ren couldn’t help but stroke through her hair as he brought his arm around her.  


He tried to sleep but having her warm body pressed against him had a very predictable effect. He did his best to control his thoughts and his body but Rey must have sensed something anyway. He felt her send a questioning tendril of the Force towards his mind and a strange recklessness washed through him. What was the point in hiding how he felt?  


One of them would be dead soon anyway.  


He let her in. Let her sense how he longed to reach inside her clothes and stroke her warm skin, to feel her beneath him, to lose himself in her.  


And he felt her respond. Her face flushed with heat as she pulled him close. Bliss washed through him as their lips found one another. He gave into it. For a few stunning moments he let himself follow that urgent need to touch her, to be part of her.  


But how could she want this, he wondered suddenly. How could she live with herself?  


“Are you sure?” he muttered into her neck, dragging himself away from the kisses he had been trailing across her skin.  


“You really don’t get it do you?” She sought his lips and kissed him again, long and slow and deep.  


And Kylo Ren’s resolve utterly crumbled. He pushed her down and rolled on top of her, pinning her down so he could move things forward.  


“Hey!” she gasped, pushing against him. But that was okay, it was the usual way these things went. He grabbed her wrists and pinned them above her head.  


For a moment she went utterly still, and then a blast of energy whacked him on the head, knocking him aside.  


“Ow!” He rubbed his head gingerly, trying to work out what had happened. Had Luke attacked him?  


“What was that?” Rey demanded shakily.  


“What was what?” Utterly bewildered, he felt Rey reach out to his mind, probing his thoughts, but unconsciously giving away a flavour of her own emotions too. She was scared, he realised with a jolt.  


“Why do you need to dominate everything?” she asked shakily.  


“There’s peace to be found in submission, Rey,” he suggested softly. “And pleasure.” She shot him a look of utter disgust. It suddenly occurred to him that Rey’s attitude to sex was probably totally different from the women he’d been with before – women in thrall of him, who got a thrill from the power he held over them.  


“I’m sorry,” he said, while he tried to work out how to explain. She was very upset, he realised suddenly, far more shaken than she was letting on.  


In the connection between them something else echoed too, something which stopped his train of thought in its tracks. Her lonely vigil on that hole of a planet hadn’t given her any chance to meet potential partners she liked.  


“I’m sorry,” he said again, not sure if she would be even more upset if she realised what he’d seen in her thoughts.  


“Let’s just go to sleep,” she sighed, lying down again. Lying in his bed. Kylo Ren blinked several times. He was beginning to think he would never understand how she felt about him. He stretched out carefully beside her, not sure how much contact was okay. “I know you know,” she muttered, her breath warm on his neck.  


“Sorry,” he said again, because he wasn’t sure what else to say. He felt her relax against him, felt her drift towards sleep. “You’re a fool to trust me,” he murmured, gently stroking down her back.  


“Yeah well, so’re you,” she yawned. “I’m better at bluffing, remember.”

 

“How was your run?” Kylo Ren asked politely, handing Rey a cup as she stepped through the hut door. He was on his best behaviour, not sure where they stood after last night. But Rey just grinned knowingly.  


“No sign of Skywanker,” she reported. Kylo Ren grinned back and they ate breakfast in companiable silence.  


“So, we’re running out of time to turn each other…” he mused when they were done. “Only a week left. What’s your plan?”  


“What’s yours?” she returned. “How are you going to make me angry if you can’t hurt anyone I care about?”  


“It’ll be easier than you think.” He hid his thoughts from her. “Why don’t you go first though? We might not be on speaking terms again after my try.”  


“Okay.” She stood up and stretched. Kylo Ren tried not to notice her body flexing under her clothes. “Come on.”  


“We’re not having a picnic?” Kylo Ren complained as she led him not to one of the island’s peaks, but to a cliff overlooking the sea.  


“Are you saying you actually want to have a deep and meaningful conversation about your parents?” Rey asked, raising an eyebrow.  


“Well no. But it’s better than being lectured.” Actually he had quite liked the picnic. He liked all the time they spent together, even when they were fighting. Especially when they were fighting. “So now what?” he asked, when they were standing on the clifftop. “I attune to all the shellfish until I decide killing is bad and embrace the Light Side?”  


“If you like,” Rey shrugged, and she pushed him off the cliff!  


For a moment his heart leapt into his mouth as terror clutched him. But then his anger rose and he slammed out with the Force to stop his fall. He kicked off the cliff and leapt   
back onto the grass beside her.  


“Okay. I deserved that,” he grumbled.  


Rey pushed him off again.  


This time he floundered in confusion for a moment, arms waving wildly before he got a grip and pushed himself back onto the clifftop again.  


“Why does everyone keep on chucking me in the sea?” he whined.  


With a yell Rey slammed into him and threw him off the cliff again. His anger was just below the surface now though, and he leapt back up onto the grass almost immediately.  


“Look!” he snapped hotly. Rey threw the Force at him and this time he was ready and blocked her. Planting his feet solidly he pushed her back. “I get why you’re angry!” he grunted through gritted teeth. “Is this really necessary?”  


“You know what?” Rey yelled back. “You really are useless! They were right! You’re so weak even I can defeat you, and I’ve never even been trained!” Kylo Ren felt his power surge within him. He screamed in rage and threw everything he had at her.  


Rey ducked aside and rocks shattered where she had been standing.  


“Who am I?” she yelled at him. “Who do you see?”  


Kylo Ren spun around and hurled his power at her again. She dodged aside and a spray of turf and rock blasted over the cliff edge.  


“Am I Snoke?” she yelled. “Vader? I’m not am I? Who do you hear when I tell you you’re worthless?”  


Kylo Ren clutched his head. He understood her purpose suddenly, but he couldn’t bear to follow her voice to its conclusion. His mind screwed up with rage and pain.  


“It’s him, isn’t it?” Rey insisted with grim satisfaction. “It’s Han.”  


Kylo Ren flung out a hand in the opposite direction to her and vented his rage with a scream. There was a terrific blast and a section of the hillside exploded and crumbled into a landslide.  


He hoped Rey didn’t notice his eyes were wet when she wrapped her arms round him.  


“It’s okay Ben,” Rey murmured. He clutched hold of her, needing her warmth. “Tell me.” But he couldn’t. It was too deep inside, a black knot he had neither the will nor strength to tease apart.  


“It’s done Rey,” he sighed. “It’s over. I killed him. That door is closed.”  


“No.” She fixed him with a penetrating look. “You can forgive him. You can overcome it all. You can change your path.”  


“It’s too late.” He realised he was trembling and hated himself for his weakness. He couldn’t do this. He wasn’t strong enough to dive into that quagmire. “I’m sorry Rey. I’m done.”  


“You’re done?”  


“I’ve had enough of this. You’ve done your best, but I chose my path a long time ago. It’s who I am.”  


A small part of him was not entirely sure this was true, but he shut that part up. He couldn’t take another emotional blindside like that. He would lose himself. The pain and self-loathing would tear him apart.  


He registered that Rey was staring at him, devastated and furious.  


“You know what your problem is?” she yelled. “You’re a coward!” Kylo Ren drew back from her, the blood draining from his face. Not her too. Please not her too.  


“You’re afraid,” she snarled. “That’s why you crave power. But you’re too much of a coward to admit it, too frightened to look inside yourself and admit what’s there.”  


Something in Kylo Ren snapped. He slammed a burst of power at her and she blocked him. They glared at each other over their outstretched hands, the energy crackling between them.  


“Say that again and I’ll destroy you!” he roared.  


“You’re a bully!” Rey yelled. “A coward!”  


With a scream of pure fury he launched a terrific blast at her. Everything he was went into it. Every word and every action that had fuelled his hate over a lifetime roared towards her.  


The hillside exploded. Boulders and turf and dust blasted outwards. He ducked, shielding his head. As the dust cleared his mind cleared a little too.  


“Rey?” he called uncertainly. Fear clutched at him suddenly. But with it came an odd relief. If she had died he wouldn’t have to kill her. Wouldn’t have to face her over his lightsabre and somehow find it within himself to make her bright light flicker out.  


He made his way through the dust and churned turf, his stomach turning over when he heard her cough. He found her curled up in a relatively undisturbed patch of ground. It looked like she had sheltered herself from the worst of the blast.  


“Sorry,” he grunted roughly, helping her up.  


“I’m sorry too.” She sighed. “Please don’t give up, Ben. I know you can do it.”  


“I meant it,” he said flatly. “I’m done. But I get another chance to turn you, remember? We can still make this work. All you need to do is follow your anger and it will lead you straight to my side. You’re so close.”  


Rey didn’t believe him. But she believed in fair play and let him take her hand and lead her away from the mess of churned soil and rock.  


“I suppose I should start calling you Kylo Ren now,” she observed sadly. Even though he agreed with her, he found himself shaking his head.  


“I like that you call me Ben. Even though I’m not him. It’s nice to know you believe in me.”  


He savoured the smile she flashed at him, doubting she would smile at him ever again. He knew this was his last chance, his very last chance, to turn her. And he was going to throw everything he had at her.

 

“I wish Luke was still alive,” Rey mused listlessly, as they passed the entrance to the cave where he’d tried to kill Kylo Ren. “There’d be some point in turning then. I could kill him all over again.”  


This thought was so close to Kylo Ren’s idle fantasies that it stopped him short. His refusal to turn had really hit her hard, he thought. She was drawn, pale, distant.  


“Come on.” He offered his hand to her. “I promise if we see Luke I’ll think up something really cutting to say.”  


“Yeah, that’ll show him,” she said sarcastically. But she took his hand.  


He led her down into the cavern with the stone mirror, the well of dark in the heart of the island. Rey stared listlessly into the mirror while Kylo Ren gathered his thoughts.  


“It might be cool being a Sith,” Rey mused idly.  


Kylo Ren stared at her.  


“Are you feeling okay?” he asked finally. “We don’t need to do this today.”  


He wasn’t quite sure what was going on.  


“It’s fine, let’s get it over with.” Rey paced about restlessly. “You’ll just mess up again anyway.”  


Kylo Ren grew cold as he realised she hadn’t been joking. An instinctive defensive anger flashed though him, but for once he pushed it aside. He couldn’t afford to get angry. Something weird was going on and he needed to tread carefully to stop it derailing his last chance to turn her.  


“So what now?” Rey demanded.  


“Let me think a minute.” He tried to gather his nerve.  


“Are you really sure you want to turn me?” she snapped.  


“No,” he replied honestly.  


“You’re scared.”  


“No,” he lied quickly. When she shot him an irritated glance he shrugged. “Maybe. But I owe you.”  


“You owe me?” she mocked. She already sounded angry, which Kylo Ren took as a good sign. But it was a strange kind of anger, a cold and repressed fury rather than her usual explosive fire. “I’m curious,” she sneered coldly, “Was it hurting BB-8 that’s brought on this fit of conscience? Or destroying most of the Resistance?”  


“I owe you for what I’m going to do, after you’re dead.” This hadn’t been part of his plan. He needed to make her angry. An honest apology wasn’t going to cut it.  


Rey seemed to be thinking along the same lines.  


“Great plan so far,” she said sarcastically. “I’m feeling really evil. I might even slip some milk into your coffee later.”  


Kylo Ren knew he had lost his grip on this conversation. He sat down heavily on a rock, trying to recall his plan.  


“Being left on that planet,” Rey offered, settling beside him.  


“What?”  


“If you want to make me angry I expect you’ll start there. You’ll remind me I don’t need to be alone anymore if I choose the Dark Side.” She scuffed her shoe in the dirt, scowling   
bitterly. “I expect then you’ll get onto how great we would rule together, how I could change the First Order into whatever I want – casually glossing over the fact if I did turn I’d be as much of a monster as you. No offense.” Kylo Ren shrugged.  


“Sounds convincing. Do my arguments work?”  


“They make me a bit angry,” she conceded, sighing up at the ceiling.  


“Well that’s something. What do I try next?”  


“Probably my parents.” She shrugged. “But you’ll end up on my friends. You’ll go on and on about Finn and Chewie and how you’re going to crush everyone.”  


“Does it work?”  


“No.” She sighed deeply. “Can we just skip it all, Ben? Can we just skip it and get to the bit where I tell you I’m not turning. And then I kiss you and we end up naked on that rock over there.”  


Kylo Ren’s heart did a kind of backflip. He gulped and tried to play it cool.  


“Over there?” He appraised the rock. “A bit gritty isn’t it?”  


“You throw your cowl over it.”  


“I’m surprisingly gentlemanlike in your fantasy,” he observed wryly.  


“It’s not a fantasy,” she grinned back. “It’s a prediction. Unless you actually want to go through the argument, in which case you’re definitely getting milk in your coffee.”  


“Silence is good with me!” He lifted his hands in mock defeat. “You forgot something though. Something I would use to turn you.”  


“Did I?” She thought about this. “Han Solo?” she guessed. “I’m still upset about losing him you know, for all that he wasn’t the best father ever.”  


“Not him,” Kylo Ren said shortly. “I wouldn’t bring him up.”  


“I guess not.” She thought some more. “Luke?” she ventured, feeling she really was scraping the barrel.  


“You know I hadn’t even thought of him. Let’s leave that smug bastard out of it, shall we?”  


“Give me a clue,” Rey demanded.  


“It’s to do with me.” He smiled mysteriously.  


“Well yes you do make me angry,” she teased. “Your hair’s nicer than mine for a start.”  


“I make you scared as well,” he pointed out quietly. The atmosphere between them froze abruptly.  


“Only when you’re being dumb,” she replied coolly after a moment.  


“When I’m being me,” he corrected. “If you can trust me, I’ll show you. It feels good Rey, I promise.”  


“Are you still trying to turn me?” she growled. “Or are you just being a creep?”  


“Probably a creep.” He felt way out of his depth with no idea how to proceed. His strategy was forgotten and he wasn’t quite sure what he was trying to achieve anymore. “How   
would you turn you?” he asked finally. “I can’t work you out. You have so much anger but I can’t find the key to access it. What are you hiding from me? What’s the equivalent of Han, to you?”  


He sensed her thoughts turn inwards as she considered his question. He listened to the echoes as she searched inside herself, saw flickers of the thoughts she rifled though: he was telling her he was done letting her try to turn him; he stood over Snoke’s corpse, his hand outstretched, asking her to join him. More and more memories, flickering by and leaving only a wash of emotion. In her mind’s eye he rejected the Light Side again and again.  


Always him. It always came back to him.  


“Me?” He tried to work it out. “I’m the key?” Realising what he had seen, she closed her thoughts to him, leaving him floundering blindly again. “How can I be the key?” he appealed. “You didn’t even know I existed until you left Jakku.”  


Slowly, a thought coalesced in his mind. She hadn’t known him, hadn’t known anyone, really. And yet had walked the path of the Light Side with steadfast steps, despite the hardship and dangers all around. It was amazing really, when he thought about it.  


“Why are you so angry at me?” he asked, trying to understand. “Your parents are the ones who left you in that desert.”  


Rey shook her head silently, close to tears, and unwilling to let him in any further.  


A truth slammed into him. He was close. Closer than he’d ever been. Not in all of her rages had she been as close to turning as she was now. He didn’t quite understand why, but he tried to feel his way forward, inching towards the darkness he could sense. It wasn’t just anger. It was hate.  


“Why do you hate me?” he asked, not expecting an answer, but paying close attention to her mind in case something slipped through her defences.  


“You can answer that,” she replied blandly. “You’ve explained loads of times why I should hate you.”  


This was a defensive fudging of the truth, Kylo Ren decided, frowning as he strained to make sense of the tiny chinks of emotion filtering through to him.  


“You hate me so much,” he realised. “You loathe me!” The knowledge was like a kick to his gut. “I don’t understand,” he said desperately. “You love me too. What’s going on Rey? You need to give me a clue.”  


“No I don’t,” she countered flatly, and stood up to end the conversation. “I think we’ll skip the cowl-on-rock episode if it’s all the same to you.”  


“Rey.” He caught her hand and held tight to it when she tried to pull away. “Tell me.” He locked gazes with her and launched a concerted attack on her mind. Her walls were strong and she fought him with everything she had. But she was crumbling from the inside, he realised. Her hate weakened her rather than strengthened her.  


She fell to her knees and clutched her head as he forced his way into her mind and saw laid bare what was there.  


The emotion was like a scream. It pummelled through his consciousness, blasting away every other thought. He broke apart, gasping.  


For a moment there was only a thick, crowded silence.  


“It isn’t the same,” he managed.  


“How is it not?” she thundered. She was on her feet suddenly, advancing on him, power crackling from her in every direction.  


“I’m not going to abandon you!” He was backing away, his hands raised to defend himself. Deadly and menacing, she stalked after him.  


“Why does everyone always leave!” she screamed suddenly. Darkness blasted out of her, bursting randomly against the rock walls.  


Kylo Ren ducked aside, scrabbling behind a boulder. Stones cracked from the walls as her power smacked into them. But it was random and short lived. A ringing silence descended quickly.  


He screwed up his courage and peered out cautiously from his boulder. It looked like her rage had given way to grief. She was crouched down, her arms wrapped around herself.  


“I don’t want to be alone anymore,” she whispered. It was the voice of a child. A lost, unfiltered voice, the walls of strength gone.  


Kylo Ren crouched beside her. Had his first instinct been correct all along? It was the trauma of being abandoned by her parents that held the key to her dark path.  


“It almost seems worth it,” she sniffed. “I could almost be that selfish.” She looked bleakly up at him. “Why did you choose the Dark Side over me?”  


Blinding realisation raced through Kylo Ren. Her parents had never been the key. He had been. All along. From the moment he had stood over Snoke’s corpse and chosen the Dark Side instead of joining her, something deep inside her had awoken. And it had grown on this island every time he had refused to join her. His betrayal cut the deepest of any she had experienced, because it had come just as she had thought she’d never be alone again.  


“I’m so sorry Rey.” He clasped her shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. “Join me. Please.”  


For a moment the yearning deep within her won. She gave in to her fear of being alone, her anger at everyone she felt had abandoned her, and her deep hatred of him which was bound so inexorably to the love she also felt.  


But it was only a moment.  


“You chose the Dark Side,” she said sadly, looking away. “Not me.”  


“We can both have both of those things!” he said desperately.  


“I’m not choosing someone who didn’t choose me.”  


“I choose you and the dark!” he cried. But the battle was lost and he could feel her withdrawing from him, locking up her pain under layers of self control all over again. “Just give in to it Rey,” he pleaded desperately. “Hit me. Hurt me. I deserve it. You’re right, I did abandon you like all the others.”  


But she just turned away from him, clamping down her anger into its usual repressed place.  


“Please Rey,” he pleaded.  


“No.” She looked grimly at him. “I’m done too. It’s over.”  


There was a long moment of silence.  


“So that’s it?” he asked bleakly. “We fight?”  


“We fight.”  


Another long moment, the keen loss washing through them both. Echoes of each other’s pain reverberated between them.  


“We don’t need to fight today though,” Rey whispered.  


Kylo Ren needed no further invitation. He pulled her close, lost himself in the feel of her lips, in the fantastic curve of her body pressed against his, in the connection between them which thrummed with heat.  


“Rey?” He pulled back slightly. “Will you join me on that rock?”  


“If you try your domination rubbish I’ll dominate you right back!” she snapped fiercely.  


“That sounds good actually,” he grinned. “Okay, okay!” He held up his hands at her expression.  


He let her draw him to the rock, her fingers curled round his hand and her face flushed. She was nervous, he realised. This was all new to her.  


“I meant it about the cowl.” She smiled shyly.  


“It’s my best cowl,” he pretended to complain, his heart pounding as she shyly pulled it off him. When she had spread it over the rock he drew her close, but then paused as he realised he wasn’t really sure what to do next. With another woman he would have taken the lead, taken what he wanted, drawn her with him in a dark and intense tide. But Rey wasn’t like those women. Wasn’t anything like them, in fact.  


“You’d better lead,” he murmured, “I don’t have the slightest idea what I’m doing.”  


“That makes two of us.” She grinned a little shyly.  


“I just meant…”  


“It’s okay.” She kissed him and pushed him down. And he let her, revelling in her touch, his whole being bursting from the heady bliss of being close to her. It was a new experience for him, giving the power over to someone else. With anyone else he would have hated it, but with her it was different.  


Rey pulled off his shirt and he grinned to see her blush. In her own way she really was quite innocent and adorable. He would never tell her that though, she’d probably hit him.  


“You know what?” she pushed him back down onto the cowled rock, flushing as she shyly stroked his chest. “You should take off your shirt more often. Although now I come to think about it, you do that quite a lot.”  


Kylo Ren pulled her down on top of him, drew her close so her warm body lay pressed against the full length of his, flushed with blinding heat.  


“So should you,” he mumbled into her neck, stroking the enticing patches of skin he could reach. He wanted so much more though. Without thinking he rolled her onto her back, pinning her down so he could pull off her clothes.  


“Ben!” she snapped warningly, a note of panic ringing clearly through.  


“Sorry.” He pulled back abruptly. “Force of habit.”  


They lay beside one another, each wondering if the moment had been irretrievably broken.  


“I really am a complete creep,” he said awkwardly. “This is probably for the best. You’d just regret it.”  


“I think I know what I’m doing thanks,” she said crisply, and she stretched a leg across him and climbed on top.  


“So you’re doming me now?” he asked, confused. He had no frame of reference for any of this.  


“Just shut up Ben,” Rey sighed. She leaned down and kissed him. “You stay down there. I got this.”

 

Kylo Ren woke from a snooze as the cool sea air rolled over his bare skin. When he opened his eyes he found Rey contemplating him with a serious, level gaze.  


“Sorry,” he mumbled.  


“Your face goes all soft when you sleep. It’s nice.”  


“I think you mean I go all strong and manly when I sleep,” he replied, pretending to be annoyed. But her expression remained serious. “Do you hate me even more now?” He sent his mind into her future, searching through the paths she could walk. Surely she must regret this? Surely she must hate herself?  


But no. Path after path, whether she died or lived in the battle that must come, she saw this moment as a precious gift. For the first time in her life she didn’t feel alone.  


“I don’t think I’ll ever understand you,” he murmured, reaching for a kiss.  


“The feeling’s mutual.” She smiled. “Well no actually it’s not. You’re pretty transparent.”  


“Thanks!”  


“My arm’s cramping up,” Rey groaned and sat up, stretching. Kylo Ren just took her in in all her glorious nakedness. “I don’t suppose you have a brilliant plan for what we should do now?” she sighed. Kylo Ren put his mind to the problem reluctantly.  


“Well one thing’s certain,” he decided finally. “There’s no way I can kill you. Let’s fly off in opposite directions. It’ll be years before the First Order finds you, I’ll make sure of it.”  


“No.” Rey looked bleakly away from him.  


“No?”  


“I can’t let you go back to the First Order. I can’t let the Dark Side rule the galaxy. This is bigger than us.” The sunlight gleamed softly over her skin. There were no secrets now between them, no way to hide from the inevitable.  


“So we fight,” he managed, surprised how calm his voice sounded. “Alright. If that’s what you want.”  


They both looked away from one another, trying to come to terms with their grief.  


“What you said,” she whispered. “I feel it too. I can’t kill you and still be me. Whoever leaves this planet, it won’t be one of us. It’ll be someone who has left their conflict behind and   
committed to just one side of the Force. A Sith or a Jedi. Walking their path alone.”  


They shared a look, a truth ringing unspoken between them. Both of them dreaded that path. But they knew their options were all but gone.  


“Rey,” Kylo Ren managed, clearing his throat with an effort. “We still have a week. We don’t need to fight today.”

 

A day or two later the warm afternoon sun found them stretched out on a grassy slope enjoying a rudimentary picnic. Kylo Ren had been keen to stay in bed all day but Rey had insisted they get out to see the sun and the sea.  


“Do you think they know?” Rey asked, nibbling a fish fritter and nodding to the two guardians who were collecting herbs further down the hill.  


“Who cares?” Kylo Ren drawled lazily, watching the way the sunlight washed over her bare arms. It was a pity she hadn’t agreed to his suggestion they didn’t bother getting dressed.  


Rey flicked a bone at him.  


“I don’t think they like you very much,” she teased.  


“I don’t think they like you very much,” he replied, grinning back.  


Later, as the sunset stained the sea with crimson, Kylo Ren pulled his arm more tightly round Rey, needing her warmth all the more as he remembered an old, painful memory. Usually he would have just relived it in his head, the bitter anger fuelling his power. But with Rey, he wanted to share.  


“I remember once when I was really young I snuck out of the house to watch a whole sunset, start to finish. Both suns. I was fascinated by the way the light must yield to shadow. When I finally went home Han was in one of his rages. He’d had to look for me instead of doing something or other with his usual crowd of criminals and lowlifes. When he yelled at me I was scared. I threw him through a window with the Force. When he looked up at me, bleeding in the broken glass, that was the first time I felt he respected me. His fear made me feel safe.”  


Rey squeezed him.  


“Are you sure you’re done trying to turn?” she asked. “We could spend hours analysing that.” Her tone pretended to be jovial, but he knew her better.  


“If it makes you feel any better, sharing with you helps.”  


They watched the sunset in silence for a long while, and as the land darkened Rey shared a painful memory of her own.  


“I watched so many sunsets. Every night for years and years. Dreaming of going far away, once they came back for me.”  


Kylo Ren felt compelled to respond to such a lonely thought.  


“Even if you defeat me,” he said gently, “you’ll have all those Resistance friends of yours. You won’t be alone, Rey.”  


“If you defeat me…” She frowned as she looked past him to his path. “You won’t have anyone. You’ll be alone.” Kylo Ren knew that was her idea of hell, but for him it was different.  


“If I kill you, I won’t need anyone,” he explained soberly. “There’s no coming back from that. I’ll take my place in history as Supreme Ruler of the galaxy and the Force. I'll have defeated the last Sith and the last Jedi.”

 

“You need to set some ground rules for tomorrow,” Luke told Rey, popping into existence right next to her as she and Kylo Ren were fishing. In answer, Rey threw her spear right through his translucent form and began reeling in a gasping fish through his torso.  


“Why are you even still here?” Kylo Ren demanded sourly, leaning on his spear.  


“Does the truce end at midnight tonight?” Luke pestered Rey. “Or midday tomorrow? You’ll feel pretty stupid if you wake up tomorrow to find he’s killed you at a minute past midnight.”  


Rey lost her temper.  


“Fuck off Luke!” she snarled, hurling a blast at him that didn’t quite exist in a physical sense. Luke staggered backwards, his eyes widening in shock, and vanished.  


Kylo Ren grinned evilly.  


“That was the coolest thing you’ve ever done,” he told her fervently. “Can you teach me?”  


“Read your super secret Sith texts,” she snapped, casting him a caustic look. Kylo Ren had the grace to look a little sheepish. As Rey began gutting the fish he crouched beside her and tried to meet her eye.  


“He’s right you know,” Kylo Ren observed softly. Rey cast him a furious glare. “What?” he laughed, holding up his hands. “He can be right once in his entire life, can’t he?”  


“Today is our last day,” Rey snapped, chopping off the fish’s head with more force than was strictly necessary. “We are not going to spend it talking about the rules for killing each other.”  


“We’ll need to talk about that sometime,” Kylo Ren pointed out. “His minute past midnight suggestion isn’t bad.” He grinned weakly.  


“There’ll be plenty of time tomorrow,” Rey said shortly, heaving the gutted fish into a sack.  


“So the truce ends at midday tomorrow?”  


“The truce ends at midday tomorrow,” she sighed.  


The looked at one another for a long moment.  


“Rey,” Kylo Ren managed finally. “I think I need some time. To prepare.”  


“Me too.”  


They carried on looking at one another.  


“How can we possibly do this?” Rey asked finally.  


“You’re fighting for your friends, remember,” Kylo Ren said dully.  


“I’m fighting for a lot more than just them.” Rey regained her resolve. “What are you fighting for?”  


“I don’t know. Me. I guess. Order. The way things should be, with the strong ruling the weak. And because it’s my destiny. It’s who I am.”  


“Its who I am too.” Rey stood up. For a moment he saw her as the hero others knew, her feet planted and her face resolved. But then she raised an eyebrow and smiled. “Your turn to make dinner tonight.”  


“Would you like fish or fish?” Kylo Ren quipped with a weak smile.  


He watched her climb the peak, guessing she was going to meditate in some high rocky place and attune to the Force, gathering her strength. He went to the stone mirror to make himself angry.

That evening started in silence, Rey coming in while Kylo Ren was half way through cooking the fish they’d caught earlier.  


“I can’t stand this stuff,” he observed darkly. “This time tomorrow I’ll be eating real food.” Rey threw herself down in a corner.  


“First Order food comes from slave labour, you know.”  


“I wouldn’t expect a scavenger to understand,” he sneered. “You grew up roasting sand flies over dung fires.”  


“I suppose to a murderer, slave labour is practically merciful,” Rey fired back. They glared at one another. “So…” Rey said finally through gritted teeth. “Are we going to sit and glare at each other all evening, or is some kind of food an option?”  


“Actually I thought we could spend the night making sweet, sweet love,” Kylo Ren sneered.  


“You’re a real pain when you’re angry, you know that?”  


“So are you, scavenger.”  


With a conscious effort Rey turned her glare away from him and looked into the bright flames of the fire. Kylo Ren saw her shoulders relax as she calmed herself down.  


“If you win,” she said softly, “Don’t bury me here. I want to be somewhere where there’s lots of people. And trees. Next to a lake maybe.” Kylo Ren felt his own anger evaporate abruptly. He reached out a hand to her, offering connection and needing it himself.  


“I just want to be buried somewhere Luke wont bug me,” he said, trying for a weak joke.  


“What about Tatooine? He hates that place.”  


“Alright,” he agreed.  


“Actually, Leia might want a say.” They both sobered at that thought. “I wonder if she’ll hate me?”  


“No.” He squeezed her hand. “She’ll understand.”  


And they were kissing again, holding each other close, pulling through the layers of clothes to reach the closeness and joining they both craved.  


The kettle boiled over and the fish burned, but they paid it no mind.

 

Kylo Ren woke in the small hours of the morning, shudders running down his spine from his usual nightmare. It was always Rey who stalked him now, always her voice that condemned him and her power that crushed his throat. He had to take a moment to orientate himself back in the present, to realise that the woman lying warm and slack beside him was the real Rey.  


Outside he could hear the first morning cheeps of the fat round birds that nested all over the island. He wanted to hold Rey close and screw his eyes shut, pushing away the knowledge of what today must bring. But that was the coward’s way out, and he was sick of being a coward.  


Instead he slipped out from beside her and pulled on his clothes, making his way outside into the early morning light.  


The stone mirror waited for him in the dark cavern as always, and he closed his eyes and laid his forehead against it.  


“Give me the strength I need,” he murmured.  


“So weak,” a cold voice sneered behind him.  


“You’re dead!” Kylo Ren snarled, whirling to face Snoke’s ghost.  


“So weak,” a voice spoke from the mirror. Kylo Ren turned to see his father staring drunkenly out at him.  


“I don’t need rage,” Kylo Ren growled at the both of them. “I need strength.”  


“Fool!” Snoke snarled. “Use your anger!”  


“Fool,” his father echoed.  


“Such a disappointment,” Snoke sneered.  


“Disappointment,” his father echoed.  


“Shut up!” Kylo Ren yelled. He flung a blast of power at Snoke which passed through him with only a ripple. “You don’t rule me anymore! I killed you!” He breathed heavily, watching Snoke smirk and fade away. “That goes for you too,” Kylo Ren snapped at the mirror.

Rey was just waking up when he got back to the hut. He pulled off his clothes without a word and slipped in beside her, pulling her close so her warm body lay against his.  


“You’re freezing,” she mumbled. He just kissed her, a long slow kiss that contained within it every facet of his feelings for her. He would lose her today, one way or the other. But in this moment, he could show her how he felt.  


“Also, you stink of seaweed,” she groaned, playfully pretending to push him away. Kylo Ren resisted the instinct to pin her down and instead pulled her on top of him. He ran his hands down her smooth back and felt her flush and warm.  


“Let’s stay here until 11.59,” he suggested as she leant down to kiss him.

 

Rey went for her usual morning run, although a little later than usual. As the day had brightened she had felt increasingly restless and angry, eventually deciding she needed some air.  


She didn’t realise where she was running to until she found herself on a ledge overlooking the sea. This had been a favourite meditation spot of Luke’s, and his sardonic resonance still clung to the place.  


“What? No tips on killing Kylo Ren?” she yelled at the blank rock wall, feeling a need to vent her anger. “Oh that’s right, he defeated you.”  


No one answered, and after a moment she flung herself down on the ledge and did her best to meditate. Again and again she reached out, trying to calm her mind, to attune to the living beings all around her.  


But again and again, she failed. There was a deep reservoir of anger in her that was seeping upwards, pooling in her consciousness and disrupting her concentration.  


Why did it have to end like this? Why was she going to be alone again?  


It was all Kylo Ren’s fault.  


If only he would turn, none of this would have to happen. But he was too cowardly, too stupid to follow the Light Side. He didn’t love her enough to choose her.  


She rose to her feet, unable to stand her own thoughts anymore.  


“Where are you Luke?” she yelled, needing someone to vent her rage at.  


But there was only silence.

 

“How do we do this?” Kylo Ren asked, as they stood on either side of the stone altar that held their lightsabres.  


“I don’t know.” Rey seemed mulish and angry. “You’re the expert on killing people.”  


“Rey…” He tried to reach for her hand but she pulled away from his grasp.  


“I think we’d better get it over with,” she said dully. “Don’t you?”  


“Alright.” He frowned as he watched her, trying to puzzle out what was going on in her head. “I need a minute to get myself angry.”  


“Fine.” She turned away.  


“Rey, don’t you think we should talk or something? Say goodbye?”  


“You chose this!” she fired at him, suddenly spitting with rage. “Don’t you dare try and pretend you’re upset.”  


This was such a bizarre thing to say that Kylo Ren felt winded. He tried to gather his thoughts and work out how to respond but Rey just went at him again.  


“You wanted this all along!” she snarled at him. “You came here to turn me or kill me. Well you’re not going to get either!” She flung out a hand and summoned her lightsabre.  


Kylo Ren instinctively did the same. Looking at her over a red beam changed something. The humming throb of the lightsabres awakened in them both an instinct to fight. They stood on either side of an impossible divide.  


“The galaxy needs you dead,” Rey growled.  


Kylo Ren realised then what he had known subconsciously for some time: she was perfectly capable of killing him. He wished he could say the same but he honestly didn’t know.   
He couldn’t imagine killing her in cold blood, but when he got angry he was capable of just about anything.  


As Rey inched around the altar towards him, he shifted his grip on his lightsabre. The handle felt wrong somehow, too long. He glanced down and felt an abrupt shift in his mind as the knowledge of the micro droid suddenly came into focus. He had hidden the memory deep so Rey wouldn’t find it, and his ruse had worked. For now, he had the element of surprise.  


“I want to say something first,” he announced, and held his lightsabre behind his back in an apparent gesture of non-violence. “You are the last Jedi.” He felt the droid activate and drop down into the grass behind him. “I am the last Sith. This isn’t personal.”  


“What the hell does that mean?” Rey demanded. “You’ve completely lost it!” Kylo Ren tried to keep his thoughts clear of the droid, tried to avoid thinking about it crawling towards her through the grass. If he could just keep her talking a little longer…  


Rey charged him with a furious yell. Their lightsabres crashed together in a shower of sparks. Kylo Ren fell back a pace or two, blocking her enraged attack. Just a little longer….  


Rey spread her hand and flung him with the Force. He smacked painfully against a stone hut and fell to the ground.  


“Ha!” she sneered. “You’re pathetic.”  


That was enough. Kylo Ren felt the dark tide rise. If she wanted a fight, he would give her one.  


With a yell he launched himself at her, driving her back with slash after slash. Around the altar they battled, lunging and dodging, angrier and angrier. Sparks sprayed between them as their blades smashed together. The altar crumbled aside, shorn in two by Rey’s blade as Kylo Ren dodged her.  


Kylo Ren knew he should try and keep her in one place so the droid could reach her, knew it was probably racing around after them as they dodged and charged at each other. But his reason had abandoned him. She would pay for thinking him weak. They all would.  


“Just give up!” Rey yelled at him. “You can’t beat me.”  


“I am more powerful than you will ever be!” he roared at her, swiping his lightsabre at her powerfully and taking out most of a wall when she dodged.  


“As if!” Rey screamed back, and smashed back into him, driving him back, back, until he was pinned against a hut wall. “You’re pathetic!” she mocked.  


He ducked under her blade as it sliced through the stone above him, showering him with sparks.  


“I’m not the one who’s terrified of being alone,” he snarled at her. “You’d fall into bed with anyone.”  


Rey screamed and hurled a blast of the Force at him, a blast laced with the immense power of her rage and hate. It overwhelmed him completely. His lightsabre sailed from his hand as he stumbled back and fell to the ground.  


Rey advanced on him, a lightsabre in each hand.  


“Join me!” she growled.  


Kylo Ren gazed up at her, terrified. The coward in him screamed to do anything to save his own life. But somehow he was done with being a coward.  


“I can’t change who I am,” he said hoarsely.  


For a moment he thought she was going to burst into tears. But she pulled her hate to her like a shield.  


“Die then,” she said coldly.  


There was a sudden crack of electricity and a bright flash by Rey’s ankle. Her whole body went impossibly rigid. And then she crumpled into the grass.  


For a long moment Kylo Ren stared at her limp body in shock. Finally he gave himself a bit of a shake and stumbled to his feet, summoning his lightsabre and retrieving the micro-droid from the grass by Rey’s foot. For a moment he stood over her, his lightsabre thrumming in his hand, the echoes of his rage still boiling through his veins. He should strike her down. That would show her! She deserved it. He was the greatest warrior of all time!  


And if he killed her now he wouldn’t need to be afraid of her.  


It was that thought that got through to him, weakened his resolve, and finally made him turn off his blade.

 

When Rey regained consciousness the night air was full of acrid smoke. She stumbled to her feet, her head ringing. Why was it dark? Where was Kylo Ren? What was going on?  


She stumbled through the huts. A guardian gabbled at her and gestured in the direction of the shuttle. She thanked it and made her slow way in that direction. Her legs were heavy and clumsy. Where on earth had Kylo Ren got to? She could do with his help right now.  


She cleared the huts and set off across the grass to where the shuttle stood. Or should stand.  


It wasn’t there.  


Rey flung out with the Force, searching the island. But it was empty of Kylo Ren’s intense presence. With a cry of anger she sent her mind casting out into the sky.  


She found him in orbit, sitting at the shuttle’s control panel, setting a course for the First Order fleet.  


“Where are you?” her projection yelled at him.  


“This way you get to live,” he replied levelly.  


“Come back!” Her voice blazed with panic and Kylo Ren had to take a moment to compose himself before replying.  


“No.”  


Rey screamed. Alone on that island her scream echoed inside her, magnifying and reverberating through the Force. Her anger and hate rolled out of her in a mountainous wave. And she gave in to them.

 

Kylo Ren laid his head on the control panel. Even from this distance he could feel the blistering charge of her pain. It took every ounce of his self-control to punch in the command to jump the ship. As the stars streaked by he wrapped his cowl around himself and brooded in the darkness.  


He wanted more than anything to comfort her, to show her she wasn’t alone. But he knew if he went back they’d end up finishing the fight to the death that was their only option now. Either she would die, or she’d destroy herself killing him. He couldn’t let that happen.  


He could reach her with a projection of course, but he knew he was the source of her deepest anger and pain. He wouldn’t be selfish, he decided. He would leave her be. If she wanted to reach out to him, she could. He wouldn’t force the issue.  


“Resistance shuttle,” the intercom crackled. “Prepare to surrender or be destroyed.”  


The screen was full of First Order ships. He had arrived at the blockade around the last vestiges of the Resistance.  


“Fool,” Kylo Ren snarled into the intercom. “It is your Supreme Leader!” He punched in his security code.  


Somehow the flurry of panicked apologies didn’t seem quite as gratifying as it would have been in the past.  


There was almost nothing he could do for Rey, he thought dully, striding through the ranks of troops who were waiting to receive him when he landed. If he tried to talk to her he’d only make her angrier. If he went back they’d end up fighting.  


He resolved to do the only thing he could to ease her anguish. He would let the Resistance go.

 

Kylo Ren brooded to himself as he watched the Resistance shuttle approach his flagship escorted by a score of TIE fighters. He could sense who was on board and didn’t relish the conversation ahead. He already hated himself for what he had done to Rey, he didn’t think he could bear more guilt. And yet a perverse part of him enjoyed it in a strange way. The self-loathing was familiar, was a part of him. He felt he deserved it.  


He solidly ignored General Hux who was simmering resentfully beside him. In the weeks that Kylo Ren had been at the temple with Rey, Hux had eagerly assembled a bristling arsenal of deadly toys around the Resistance base. The man had thrown a shrill tantrum when Kylo Ren had informed him they would negotiate with the Resistance rather than destroy them.  


Kylo Ren had once relished frustrating Hux, but somehow he no longer cared. A month ago he would have been eager to destroy this last wrinkle in the mighty behemoth he had created. Now, he just felt empty aside from a familiar ache of self-loathing. Without Rey by his side, all of this was pointless.  


A few minutes later the doors to the audience chamber swept aside to reveal the Resistance’s chief negotiator, flanked by stormtroopers.  


“General Leia,” Hux sneered, with a shallow parody of a bow. Leia nodded coldly to Hux before turning a more expressive eye on Kylo Ren. He nodded stiffly, his brows drawing together as he sensed the changes in her since the last time they had met. Although her powers were still raw and untrained she seemed more aware of them now. And he sensed she held a grim resolve. A darkness that had not been there before.  


“Kylo Ren,” she addressed him, with a nod as cold as the one she had offered Hux.  


“Not Ben?” he found himself blurting, and could have kicked himself. Leia raised a cool eyebrow.  


“My son died a long time ago. On the same day as my ex-husband, in fact. You killed them both.”  


Kylo Ren felt like she had kicked him in the gut. Leia’s assessment of him was far closer to the truth that Rey’s. So why did it hurt so much?  


Somehow he had always thought that no matter what he did, Leia would still care about him, would still see the chink of her son that lived on amidst the darkness.  


Obviously, he had been wrong.  


A part of him was aware he should be angry at her. Here she was blaming him when in the end it had all been her fault! She was the one who had married that useless drunken smuggler after all. And dumped Ben with him while she went off on her diplomatic duties. If it hadn’t been for her, none of this would have happened!  


Kylo Ren tried to be angry. And failed. All he felt was a deep emptiness. What was the point of feeling anything anymore?  


“Enough,” Hux snapped irritably, trying to take charge as he always did. “We’re not interested in your idle chatter. You’re here to agree the terms of the Resistance’s surrender.” He cast a sullen glance at Kylo Ren. “And safe passage.”  


“I am not accustomed to negotiating with armed guards in the room,” Leia countered calmly, casting a pointed glance at the stormtroopers holding position at the door.  


“You are in no position to demand anything!” Hux almost shrieked.  


“Surely the two most powerful men in the galaxy don’t feel threatened by me?” Leia mocked.  


Kylo Ren frowned to himself. He sensed a purpose underlying her words. His instincts told him that to acquiesce to her request would put him and Hux in danger. But somehow he found his sympathies lay with her. Whatever she was plotting, he couldn’t muster the will to stand in her way. He had hurt her enough already. He barely cared if she killed him.  


“Go,” Kylo Ren ordered the guards flatly.  


The doors slid shut behind the stormtroopers, leaving him and Hux alone with Leia.  


Kylo Ren concentrated his full attention on her, trying to sense her plan, and let Hux do the talking and make a fool of himself as he always did.  


“Here is the treaty,” Hux snarled, tossing it in front of her. Leia just smiled thinly.  


“If you think this will make the slightest bit of difference, you are even more foolish than your reputation suggests.” She swept to the window and gazed out at the First Order fleet, arrayed impressively against a backdrop of stars. “The Resistance is everywhere and nowhere. You may defeat our base on this planet, but a thousand more will spring up across a thousand distant moons. The galaxy has had enough of your tyranny, General Hux.” She glanced at Kylo Ren. “And yours.”  


Kylo Ren felt a powerful burn of betrayal at her words. But he also felt an odd relief. At least she saw him as he really was, which was something Rey had never managed.  


“Enough!” Hux yelled, losing his cool completely. “You are here to negotiate your surrender!”  


“No,” Leia said calmly, pulling a thermal detonator from an inner pocket. “I am here to negotiate yours.”  


Hux gave a strangled cry and pulled his gun from its holster. Kylo Ren reacted on pure instinct, flinging out a hand and blasting Hux into the wall with a primal yell. The man smacked with such force he smashed a dent into the bulkhead and crumpled unconscious to the floor.  


For a moment there was silence. The flush of the Force receded from Kylo Ren’s mind, leaving him confused. The power hadn’t come from his habitual rage, instead it had flowed from somewhere new, from a deep instinct to protect Leia.  


Leia who was still holding the thermal detonator.  


“Give it to me,” Kylo Ren ordered flatly, his gloved hand outstretched.  


“Ben?” Leia asked, a wash of vulnerability sweeping across her face.  


“No!” he almost snarled. Why did no one he care about understand who he really was? “Give it to me! If you don’t I’ll take it from you anyway.” Leia’s expression hardened.  


“Your evil ends today,” she proclaimed. “Let my son’s soul rest in peace.” She activated the detonator.  


Kylo Ren blasted it out of her hand, smashed it through the window and into the vacuum beyond, where it exploded in a burst of white light. The window shattered and everything in the room swept towards the void. Kylo Ren strained with every inch of his powers to hold his body, Leia and the air in the room. The power of his anger wasn’t enough, but that strange flush of protective instinct for Leia helped somehow, strengthening his powers in a way he hadn’t felt before.  


Beside him he could sense Leia’s powers fighting him, trying to suck the air out to kill them both, but she relied mainly on untrained instinct. He managed to pull down the emergency bulkhead over the broken window to seal the breach.  


“Anything else?” he growled at her, breathing heavily. “Or are you done for now?”  


“I may not have succeeded,” Leia returned resolutely, “but one day one of us will. The Resistance will prevail.”  


“You’re probably right,” Kylo Ren sighed, thinking of Rey.  


The door swished open and stormtroopers poured in, their guns trained on Leia.  


“I did not give you permission to enter!” Kylo Ren snarled. “Hux has injured himself in a foolish accident. Take him away and get out!” He flung the slowest stormtrooper out with the Force to emphasise his point. Or he tried to, but the power of his rage failed him and the man just stumbled a little as he fled. Kylo Ren looked drew back his outstretched hand and stared at it. Where had his power gone?  


He turned to find Leia looking at him with a strange expression.  


“It isn’t what you think,” he said swiftly. “I didn’t do it to help you. I just don’t like Hux.” He summoned the treaty from where it had fluttered in the confusion and set it in front of her again. “I’ll give the Resistance safe passage to the borders of First Order territory,” he told her. “If you keep that wookie and that ex-storm trooper out of harm’s way, and I’ll let all the others go too. That’s the deal.”  


“You are an unlikely saviour,” she observed, surveying him closely. “How does this benefit the First Order?” She was drawing on the Force unconsciously, he realised, attempting to peer into his thoughts. Perhaps this was one reason why she was such a renowned negotiator. If he hadn’t been trained to resist such a probe he probably wouldn’t have noticed.  


As it was, he let her into his mind. He didn’t quite understand why. Perhaps it was because there was still part of him that yearned for her to understand him.  


“Ben,” she breathed, reaching a hand up to stroke his face.  


“No.” His harsh voice cracked through the room. “I’m no hero. See me for who I really am.”  


Leia dropped into a chair with a sigh of deep sadness.  


“You remind me so much of your father sometimes.” This comment earned her a snarl from Kylo Ren.  


“I am nothing like him!” he yelled. Leia’s expression became distant as her thoughts turned to the past.  


“So many echoes between you,” she sighed. “His father’s flaws have been repeated, magnified and distorted in the mirror of each generation. The same insults. The same ghosts.”  


“Are you signing this or not?” Kylo Ren demanded. Leia signed the treaty.  


“Congratulations,” he sneered sourly. “You’re a saviour too now.”  


“And you accuse me of seeing only what I want to see?” Leia chuckled chidingly. She didn’t have the training to consciously drop her mind’s defences and let him in, but Kylo Ren felt her unspoken invitation and peered into her thoughts.  


He took a step back, blinking in shock. “You’re conflicted too?”  


“Everyone is,” Leia chided, as though he had missed something blatantly obvious. “Those with the Force. Those without. You don’t have a monopoly on angst, Ben.”  


“What does it feel like, for you?”  


“Fear.” She smiled sadly. “For those I am responsible for. For everyone, really. And anger, because I know I have failed them. I have let darkness sweep once more across the stars. I was too blind to see it. To see you. And by the time I did, it was too late.”  


“Of course it was!” he snarled at her. “You were never around!” Leia’s face crumpled, and he felt his accusation feed into the darkness in her. Something in him turned over. A door inside opened and it became impossible for him to stand aside and let her bear such pain. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said quickly. “It was my destiny to turn. I belong on the Dark Side. It’s who I am.”  


“Ben,” Leia breathed, placing a hand on his shoulder. He brushed it off.  


“I’m not who you think I am,” he stated flatly, wondering why no one seemed to get this. Her hurt expression wounded him so deeply that he had to turn brusquely away from   
her. “It’s time for you to go.”

Kylo Ren walked her back to her shuttle, turning their conversation over in his mind. To him, Leia had always seemed an endless if absent source of love. But even she felt the pull of the Dark Side. What did that mean for him? And Rey?  


At the ramp to her shuttle they paused and looked at one another.  


“Come with me Ben.” Leia stroked his face with a gentle, worn hand. “You don’t belong here anymore.”  


“I have chosen my path,” he stated flatly. “I have chosen power, not you.” Leia recognised his brusque rebuttal for the attempt to push her away that it was. She absorbed it and responded without rancour.  


“I have felt a shift in the Force,” Leia told him softly. “A new power has arisen on the Dark Side.” Kylo Ren shrugged, pretending not to understand.  


“If a challenger emerges I will cut him down like all the others.” He cleared his throat with difficulty. “Or you could?” he asked hopefully.  


“This is your fight,” Leia replied. She smiled sadly, and as he looked at her he realised suddenly how old she was, how many years of her life she had devoted to this desperate struggle. “My fight is over.”

 

Kylo Ren swept out of the hanger with as much presence as he could muster. Once alone in his private quarters though he locked the door and gazed listlessly around. He felt completely lost.  


He wasn’t consciously aware of reaching out to Rey, but when he found himself suddenly standing in the bright sunshine, a warm sea breeze sweeping through his hair, he knew his thoughts had betrayed him.  


He looked about, eager but nervous, readying himself for a confrontation. When he saw her draped over a piece of wreckage his heart almost stopped, but she was just sleeping. Her body was slack with exhaustion, her face lined and grey. She was draped over the unit she had been working on, a spanner in her limp hand.  


He crouched beside her and carefully reached out with the Force, trying to sense as much as he could without waking her. What he saw shook him. Her body was at its limit. She had clearly been working relentlessly. He wondered when the last time was she had eaten.  


And there was something else too. Something difficult to see. He began to recognise it and pulled himself quickly away, refusing to accept it.  


He took in the bag of homemade tools by her side and the wreckage scattered around. He guessed she had lifted Luke’s old X-wing from its watery grave and set about trying to fix the corroded metal into something that would fly again. He had to admire her determination. But it was a foolhardy plan.  


She was the only thing he could touch when he was projecting. He lifted her into his arms and carried her towards her hut. Half way there though he came across her annoying little droid rewiring a motherboard.  


“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Kylo Ren asked sourly, looming over the droid. BB-8 let out a series of shrill beeps and rushed towards him extending five or six metal arms with various nasty looking appendages.  


“You can’t actually touch me, you know,” Kylo Ren pointed out irritably. “I’m just a projection.” But the droid still stood in his path, shifting back and forth and brandishing its various metal arms. “Look, if I wanted to hurt her I would have done it already,” Kylo Ren snapped at the droid. “I could have destroyed this whole island from orbit!” BB-8’s arms drooped as it considered this.  


“Listen.” Kylo Ren crouched down to the droid’s level, lowering his voice as Rey shifted in her sleep. “You and I want the same thing.” The droid beeped angrily in answer. “You think this thing will fly?” Kylo Ren demanded angrily. “Even if she makes it into orbit, the hull won’t hold up in space. Or if she tries to jump.” BB-8 whirred uncertainly as it considered this. “Look, I’ll send a drone to blast all this wreckage so she’s got no change of building anything. I’ll send it at sunset, you keep her inside a hut where she’ll be safe.  


BB-8 squeaked shrilly and rolled backwards, shaking its head from side to side. “Your choice,” Kylo Ren snapped. “Help me keep her safe. Or let her die up there.” Kylo Ren patted BB-8’s head condescendingly, though the effect was ruined a little by the projection of his hand passing straight through. “Think about it. And make sure she sleeps and eats enough.”  


BB-8 let out a series of defiant beeps followed by a high-pitched squeal to wake up Rey.  


She lay dazed while she worked out what was going on. Then with a sudden yell she scrambled out of Kylo Ren’s arms, punching him for good measure.  


“Get your hands off me!” she snarled. Kylo Ren stepped back, forcing down his dismayed reaction to her words. “Don’t you…” Rey stammered, furious. “Don’t you dare!”  


“Alright,” Kylo Ren agreed quietly. They looked at one another. A long pause crowded with pain.  


“So?” Rey asked finally. “Who have you killed so far?” Kylo Ren blinked, confused, and her rage crested again. “How many of my friends have you killed so far?” she yelled, launching herself at him. Kylo Ren stepped back from her blows, blocking and ducking, until the sharp edge of her anger was spent and she fell back, glaring at him.  


“No-one,” he replied, shrugging slightly. “I let the Resistance go.” He wondered whether to tell her how much he despised himself for hurting her, how much he longed to come back, to show her she wasn’t alone.  


But before he could say anything a strange expression had washed over Rey’s face.  


“I should have known you wouldn’t have the stomach for it,” she sneered. “You really are useless aren’t you?” Kylo Ren stared at her.  


“I did it for you,” he said honestly.  


Rey flung out a hand, her face twisted with hate.  


“Liar!” she yelled, “I don’t need you! I don’t need anyone!” Kylo Ren found himself standing back in his quarters, staring in shock at a blank wall.

 

Kylo Ren emerged from his bathroom drying his hair with a towel to find Luke propped against a wall with his arms folded.  


“I should have known you’d have your top off,” Luke drawled. “Any excuse eh?”  


“What the hell do you want?” Kylo Ren demanded.  


“Truce?” Luke held up a hand with an ironic grimace. “You know why I’m here anyway.”  


Kylo Ren pretended he didn’t and pulled on his shirt darkly.  


“You’re our last hope!” Luke groaned. “The irony is killing me.”  


Kylo Ren threw his towel through Luke’s ghost in disgust.  


“Go bother someone else.” He stalked into an adjoining room and slammed the door.  


“If you don’t stop her, she’ll come after you anyway!” Luke persisted, following him through the wall. Kylo Ren threw himself into a chair and rubbed his eyes tiredly.  


“Even if you’re right,” he said heavily. “What makes you think I can defeat her?” He looked up at Luke, open for once about his insecurities.  


“The Light Side is stronger than the dark,” Luke intoned gravely. “Always has been.” Kylo Ren snorted.  


“Liar.”  


“How about this then?” Luke crouched beside Kylo Ren and looked him in the eye. “I was wrong about you.”  


Kylo Ren stared at him.  


"That’s it?” Kylo Ren said eventually. “You expect us to hug now?”  


"If you defeat her I’ll consider bending over that table for you.” Luke grinned humourlessly.  


Kylo Ren flung himself to his feet and paced across the room and back again.  


“Maybe I have felt a shift in the Force,” he admitted unwillingly. “I don’t believe it though.” He appealed to Luke. “I couldn’t kill her before, how do I do it now?”  


“Rey’s gone, you fool!” Luke snapped. “Grow a backbone.” He faded away, leaving Kylo Ren even angrier than usual.  


“I knew there was a reason I hated you!” he yelled at the empty room, but he was too gutted to feel any real venom.

 

“Aft thrusters, check,” Rey grunted, flicking a switch. The light on the dashboard flickered a few times and went out. She hit it with a spanner. “Can’t you fix that?” she yelled at BB-8, who was under the dashboard. Her droid gave an alarmed series of beeps. “I don’t care!” she snapped. “Get it working.” She moved onto the next system, jabbing the buttons angrily. “Blasters, check,” she reported, flicking the switch on and off again when it failed to respond. “Well, we don’t need them anyway.”  


BB-8 rolled out from under the dashboard and beeped at her.  


“I know what I’m doing!” she snapped. “Shut up and do your job.” There was a crackle of static and a dial on the dashboard shattered. Rey threw down her spanner in disgust. “Finish up here,” she ordered BB-8. “I’ll deal with that.”  


BB-8 beeped more insistently.  


“Coward! You’re even worse than him! We’re taking off tomorrow no matter what! If you’re too scared you can stay here and rust.” She stormed out of the cockpit.  


BB-8 extended a periscope above the dashboard to survey the sky outside. Dusk was approaching quickly. The droid shifted uncertainly backwards and forwards several times before finally rolling outside and beeping insistently at Rey.  


“I’m not stopping until this is done!”  


BB-8 beeped more urgently.  


“Stop fussing!” Rey snapped. What’s gotten into you today?  


In the range beyond normal human hearing, BB-8 sensed the low thrum of an engine. The droid gave an alarmed whistle and rolled forward, grabbing Rey’s sleeve with an extended arm. It pulled her away from the shuttle.  


“Get off me!” Rey snapped irritably, throwing BB-8 back with the Force.  


A sudden rumble split the peace of the island. BB-8 rolled forward and smacked into Rey, pushing her stoutly away from the wreckage and behind a hut.  


Out of nowhere a sleek First Order drone zipped through the atmosphere and let off a series of blasts at the repaired X-wing. The ship exploded into a blast of fire and shower of metal fragments.  


Rey yelled and fought her way towards the wreckage, but BB-8 pushed her back with all its might. With a scream of rage, Rey sent a burst of startling energy at the drone, crushing its wings and sending it hurtling into the sea.  


As quickly as it had appeared, the drone was gone, leaving only the burning wreckage of the X-wing in its wake.  


Rey stared at the remains of the shuttle, all of her dreams of escape going up in smoke.  


“You…” she turned and advanced on BB-8. “You knew it was coming.” The droid backed away from her, beeping a panicked explanation. “Traitor!” she yelled. She flung out a hand and threw BB-8 with the Force, smashing the droid against a hut wall. The wall collapsed and BB-8 burst with a spray of sparks into a pile of crumpled wreckage.

 

Kylo Ren was dreaming. The same dream he always had. His footsteps echoed in the empty flagship bridge. A dark presence stalked after him. And then he heard her mocking voice. It was always her now.  


“So weak.” Her power closed around his neck and he flailed wildly as he rose off the ground. “So weak.” He was choking, fighting for breath, legs kicking uselessly. Dying. Why was this going on so long? Usually he had woken up by now.  


“So useless,” Rey’s voice mocked, but it didn’t come from inside the dream. Kylo Ren woke in a rush, clutching his neck. His eyes bulged in the darkness as he saw Rey’s projection leaning over him, her bright hands twisted around his throat.  


“I thought you liked this kind of thing?” she snarled bitterly, as he flailed around in a panic. “What’s the matter? Too rough for you? Oh I get it, you only like fighting people weaker than you.” She smiled pitilessly as she twisted her grip. “Well tough luck.”  


Kylo Ren finally got a grip on her and threw her off him. He scrambled out of bed to the far wall, shaking with fear and shock. Was he still in his nightmare?  


“Rey…” he ventured shakily. “What’s going on?”  


“I have come with an invitation,” she told him coldly. “I don’t know why I bother though. You’re too much of a coward to accept.”  


“If I come back we’ll just end up killing each other,” he managed, rubbing his neck. Rey stalked towards him, smiling mockingly as he retreated from her.  


“No,” she growled. “If you come back I’ll just end up killing you.”  


“Look I know you hate me,” he said desperately. “But can’t you understand? I did it for you! To save you!”  


“I don’t need to be saved!” Rey yelled, her voice blazing with anger. “I don’t need you at all! Come back and fight. Let’s finish this.” She faded away.

 

The moment Kylo Ren’s shuttle snapped out of hyperspace and the pearly blue planet filled the viewscreen, he felt her darkness. Or more accurately, it was too overwhelming for him to decently pretend not to notice it.  


Every moment of the journey here he had tried to convince himself that he was mistaken, that the changes he had felt in the Force had some other cause, that she couldn’t have turned. Not Rey.  


But as the shuttle descended into the atmosphere he forced himself to accept it.  


They were both on the Dark Side now. Which meant she was probably his enemy.  


But he would try. He would do his very best to get her to join him. They would rule well together. She would be happy, he was sure of it. They would neither of them be alone.  


The shuttle ramp descended in a cloud of vapour and Kylo Ren made his way cautiously out into the familiar windswept huts. He couldn’t help but keep his hand poised over his lightsabre. Rey’s darkness was everywhere, infusing this place.  


He knew she was aware he had arrived, but she didn’t come to meet him. Instead she let him feel his way towards her, sensing as he did the fear of the guardians hiding in their huts, the absence of the Jedi ghosts as they lurked beyond Rey’s reach. It was when he walked past the broken remains of BB-8 that it really hit him though. The Rey he knew would have worked tirelessly to fix that droid. The Rey he knew was gone.  


Even without the Force to guide him he would have known where to find her. When he descended to the cavern steeped in the Dark Side, he found her sitting cross-legged staring into the stone mirror, an ironic parody of the peaceful meditation she had practiced in the past.  


“How have you been?” he ventured cautiously, keeping well back.  


“I thought I might see something different,” she said softly. “But still all I see is myself. I know what it means now.” She rose to her feet and turned to face him. “I don’t need you, or anyone else. You make me weak. But I can be strong again. I’ve always been stronger than you.”  


Kylo Ren took a deep breath.  


“This isn’t you, Rey,” he appealed. “Do you even realise what’s happened to you?”  


Rey didn’t answer directly. Rather than admit the truth she took solace from her anger.  


“Don’t I deserve to get what I want?” she demanded. “I have tried and I have tried. And all that happens is people like you walk all over me!”  


Kylo Ren blinked several times, trying to untangle the logic of this statement. Rey didn’t give him a chance.  


“I’m sick of playing by the rules!” she announced. “I deserve to get what I need! No one else is going to give it to me.”  


He abandoned trying to unpick her logic and instead tried to reach her in the way he felt instinctively might work.  


“Rey, go back to the Light Side. Remember your friends. They’re counting on you.”  


Rey took a step towards him and he instinctively retreated a step. She pressed forward again, and again he stepped back.  


“So weak,” she mocked. “Look at you!”  


“I came here didn’t I?” he managed.  


“Yes, you came here to die.” Her lightsabre was suddenly in her hand. “Stupid as well as weak.”  


And she went for him with a yell, slashing her blade at his head. Kylo Ren blocked her and retreated back. She followed him fiercely, their beams smashing together, sending sparks spraying across the cavern. Again and again he blocked her, unable to bring himself to attack back.  


“Fight me!” she yelled at him, and when he just blocked her again she flung out a hand, throwing him across the cavern. He landed in a crumpled heap against the far wall. “You’re pathetic!” she snarled. “They were all right about you.”  


Something got through. Kylo Ren felt the heat of anger rise, and he pulled himself to his feet with a shake.  


“I am not weak,” he grunted, wondering if he believed it. Rey was on him in a moment, smashing her blade against his. Round and round the cavern they battled, matching blow for blow. Rage burned through every lunge Rey made. Hate leant power to her thrusts. But Kylo Ren didn’t feel any of that. He blocked her, he dodged. He even slashed her back. But his heart wasn’t in it.  


She was going to kill him, he knew. Here in the darkness was where he would die.  


Suddenly he couldn’t bear that thought. He had to feel the bright sun on his face, if only for a moment. He dropped back a pace and leapt out of the cave using the Force. When he landed in the grass, the bright sun washing across his skin, for a moment he felt better until Rey leapt up after him.  


“Why did you come if you’re just going to run away?” Rey mocked.  


“Because I care about you,” he said honestly. His words reached her, he saw her flush with an array of conflicted emotions.  


“Shut up!” she screamed, and slashed at him wildly.  


Kylo Ren blocked her with a sudden burst of power that surprised him. It sprang from somewhere entirely new. Instead of drawing on his anger he found himself drawing on his protective instinct for the Rey he knew, the Rey who had been destroyed by the woman fighting him.  


Rey slashed at him again and he blocked again. Solidly. His new power felt completely different from the rage and hate he usually tapped into. But he went with it, using it to smash back her blade, push her back towards the cliff edge, blow after powerful blow. They were battling right on the edge of the cliff, the roaring waves reaching up below them.  


“Get out of my life!” Rey screamed in frustration, hurling a boulder at him. Kylo Ren deflected it and heard it crash into the sea below.  


“You’re so much stronger than this!” he yelled back at her. “Go back to the Light Side!”  


“Come back to the Dark Side!” she returned, launching a blast of power at him. He dived aside as the rocks he had been standing on shattered.  


Finally, she had admitted it. On some level she knew she had turned. A new strategy came suddenly to Kylo Ren and he reached out to her with his mind and his hand together.  


“We belong together!” he appealed. As she paused a moment, her conflict clear in her face, he finally managed to lunge under her guard. The tip of his blade hummed over her heart. For a moment they both froze there, his lightsabre hovering over her chest, an inch from killing her.  


“What are you waiting for?” she managed.  


Kylo Ren stared at her. Ever since he had turned against Luke his path had led him straight into the darkness, drawn him towards this point. This was his great destiny. To destroy the Jedi and the Sith and take his place as supreme ruler of the galaxy and the Force, greater than any who had come before. The path to ultimate power stretched wide ahead of him. But he couldn’t bear to take the next step.  


He stepped back. Stepped back and shook his head.  


“Never.” He threw his lightsabre off the cliff edge. “I’m not going to kill you Rey.”  


She gave a scream of rage and hurled herself at him. He ducked under her blade, scrambling aside as her lightsabre scored a black line through a boulder, shattering it.  


“Fight me!” she yelled, advancing on him.  


“Never!” he managed, though his breath froze in his throat with terror. Rey flung him back onto the grass and thrust the point of her blade under his chin, hot against his neck.  


“Then die,” she growled. Kylo Ren looked into her eyes and saw no pity there.  


“If you kill me, you will always be alone.” It was perhaps the only thing that could have gotten through to her. A note of vulnerability washed through her face, and Kylo Ren pressed his point. “I need you just as much as you need me,” he insisted. “Don’t see it as a weakness. It’s a strength.”  


“So what do you suggest?” she demanded sourly. “We leave here hand in hand and rule the First Order together? Except every day I would hate you. Every day I would know you chose the Dark Side over me. You abandoned me.” She spoke in a different, vulnerable voice. “Everyone always abandons me, in the end.”  


For a moment Kylo Ren considered saying everything he had said before: that he hadn’t abandoned her, he had tried to save her; that he wanted desperately to be with her; that he couldn’t change who he was or the path he had chosen, but he could choose to walk that path with her.  


But saying all that again wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference.  


“It’s clear we can’t be together on the Dark Side,” he agreed heavily. “Or the Light. But we can still be together on opposite sides, like before.”  


“Like before when we were trying to kill each other?” she asked sarcastically.  


“We can make a deal. I’ll leave the Resistance alone. You leave the First Order alone.”  


Her lightsabre was lowering, he realised. As he reached out to her, her anger was giving way to confusion and hope.  


“And you want that?” she frowned. “Don’t you want to defeat me? Don’t you want all the power for yourself?”  


“No!” he said desperately. “I want you beside me.” He reached out a hand, appealing to her. “You know that. It’s why you suggested our truce.”  


She didn’t take his hand, but she did switch off her lightsabre.  


“If I killed you it would destroy me,” he told her gently. “Just like killing me will destroy you. So let’s follow a different path. Let’s stay ourselves, on our own sides of the Force. It’s the only way we can be together.”  


“No,” she said quietly.  


“No?” Kylo Ren felt his heart drop into a bucketful of ice. “I didn’t abandon you Rey, not really.”  


“I know.”  


“Then why not?” he demanded.  


“Because I can’t let you rule the galaxy,” she said heavily. “I can’t let the Dark Side win.” Kylo Ren let out a strangled choke of relief and wrapped his arms around her, holding her tightly.  


“Do you know how much I missed you?” he mumbled into her neck.  


Their lips found each other, hungering desperately for closeness. She was everything he wanted and everything that mattered. He lost himself in her touch, in her closeness, in the deep yearning she drew from him.  


Kylo Ren sank into the grass, pulling her down on top of him in a move that had become habitual in their time together. But he felt her stiffen and pause, drawing back uncertainly.  


“No?” he asked, his heart clenching. A flare of anger rose up. Didn’t he deserve to get what he needed? But he pushed it aside. He didn’t want to be that man anymore. “It’s alright,” he mumbled. “It was a stupid idea anyway.”  


“It’s not that.” Her face was so close, her lips just inches from his. But the uncertainty crumpling her face somehow killed all his desire. “I just don’t know if I trust myself anymore.”  


They sat back up, side by side in the broad sweep of waving grass.  


“You think you’ll hurt me or something?” he guessed.  


“I don’t know. There’s something deep inside me that’s woken up. And it hates you, Ben.” She looked bleakly at him.  


Kylo Ren let a long breath.  


“Every time it gets close I’ll bring you back,” he promised. “Like you bring me back.” Rey dropped her head into her hands.  


“I trust you far more than I trust myself right now,” she sighed. “Is that weird?”  


“No!” Kylo Ren smiled. “I’ve always trusted you far more than I trust myself.”  


“Always?” Rey smiled cheekily back. “Even all the times I’ve kicked your ass?”  


“Well maybe not always,” he grumped. “And I’m way stronger now by the way.”  


“I know.” She sobered. “I felt it, while we were fighting. You’ve got something that wasn’t there before.” She looked questioningly at him but Kylo Ren didn’t understand it himself   
so he had nothing to offer her.  


“We can just be friends?” he suggested, more sourly than he had intended. Rey let out a startling peal of laughter. Despite everything, Kylo Ren felt his heart lift. She was really back. He caught her hand and pulled her close enough to reach her lips.  


This time she was the one who pulled him down, settling into the grass and looking up at him with clear eyes. He had always let her lead before, given her the power, but now she had given it back. And the weight of her trust was humbling. He didn’t deserve it, he knew. But he was determined not to betray it.  


Over her clothes he stroked and kissed, savouring the warm skin he could reach. He wanted to go slowly, feeling his way around whatever uncertainties she might have, healing the pain he had caused her. But Rey was having none of it.  


“I’m not made of glass you know!” she laughed, reaching up to pull off his clothes. “And it’s way too long since you took your shirt off.”

 

Kylo Ren woke from a snooze with his arm around Rey and her warm body pressed against him. The bright sun beat on his skin and the sea breeze was fresh and full of life.  


For the first time since their truce had ended he felt at peace.  


“Sorry,” he yawned. “Didn’t mean to fall asleep.”  


Rey rolled over and contemplated him thoughtfully, brushing a tangled strand of hair out of his eyes.  


“Maybe it’ll always be like this,” Rey mused softly. “Maybe we will both always walk on the edge of our path. You’ll draw me to the dark, I’ll draw you to the light.”  


“No,” Kylo Ren stated flatly. “I’m never trying to turn you again. If I can possibly keep you on the Light Side, I will.” He was utterly serious, but Rey responded with a slightly cheeky smile.  


“I’m sorry but I can’t say the same for you and the Dark Side.” She nudged him playfully. “I’m never giving up on you.” He smiled back at her, reached for a kiss, drew her to him and held her close again.  


Sometime later he lay with his head nestled between her breasts, listening to her heart beating.  


“This is ours,” she observed softly, stroking her fingers through his hair. It could have been a cryptic comment, except Kylo Ren knew exactly what she meant. “No matter what comes next, this moment is ours.”

 

Kylo Ren woke in their stone hut in the small hours of the morning. For the first time in weeks it hadn’t been Rey stalking him in his nightmare, it had been a masked version of himself.  


He lay silently in the darkness, feeling Rey’s soft breathing against him, wishing he could find peace in the moment.  


But he couldn’t. They had achieved nothing. Despite all of their efforts on this island everything was still the same. This peace couldn’t last.  


He rose and pulled on some clothes, slipping out into the night. He had no destination in mind but his feet took him far from Rey, down paths he had rarely had cause to follow, until he found himself at the mouth of a cavern.  


The cavern where Luke and his students had tried to kill him.  


Kylo Ren stared into that dark entrance with resignation. He knew why his steps had brought him here.  


“Hmmm,” a voice croaked suddenly behind him. Kylo Ren almost leapt out of his skin. “Cold down there,” Yoda observed, pulling his phantom robes tighter with a shiver. “And dark.”  


“You lied to me,” Kylo Ren replied coolly, unwilling to confide his deepest emotions. “You told me she’d never turn from the Light Side.”  


“Hmm? Yes. Yes.” The little master settled on a rock with a grunt. “Difficult to see, the Dark Side is.” He didn’t seem particularly perturbed.  


“Here to impart some wisdom?” Kylo Ren asked sourly, trying to hide how desperately he would appreciate some advice at this point.  


“Wisdom?” Yoda laughed croakily. “Wisdom, you have no need of.”  


Kylo Ren turned away, trying not to show this was a blow.  


“So you’ve just come gloat?” he asked bitterly. “Watch the last Sith die?”  


“Mmm.” Yoda was watching him with luminous, eager eyes.  


“There has to be another way!” Kylo Ren yelled furiously, finding solace in familiar rage. “I can keep her safe somewhere away from the First Order. I’ll strand some of her friends with her next time so she won’t be alone.” He paced back and forth. “But she’d never rest until she escaped,” he admitted heavily. “She won’t let the Dark Side rule the Galaxy.” Kylo Ren appealed to Yoda. “There must be some way she can fight me without losing herself. In the old days Jedi fought Sith all the time.”  


“Mmm,” Yoda hedged, his ears twitching as he followed Kylo Ren’s angry pacing with interest.  


“It’s because it’s me,” Kylo Ren muttered heavily. “If it was anyone else she’d be okay. But with me it’s different.” He clutched his head. “You’re not much help!” he fired suddenly at Yoda.  


“Mm?” The Jedi looked a bit put out. “Fear,” he offered. “Always fear is the key.”  


“How illuminating,” Kylo Ren sighed, feeling more alone than ever. He stared over the sea as it glinted black and silver under the moonlight. From here he could sense the profusion of living creatures swarming under its surface. There was such peace out there. He couldn’t recall ever feeling peace like that before he met Rey.  


“If we both leave this island, we’ll end up in a fight to the death again,” he prophesised dully. “Whether it happens in a week, or a month, or a year, our paths will draw us together, towards that fate. I know I can’t kill her, but she can kill me. And then she’ll lose herself again.”  


When he put it like that, it was clear he had only one choice.  


If he had the courage to follow it through.  


Yoda’s ears rose as he watched Kylo Ren walk determinedly to the cave entrance, his face clenched and pale.  


“You’ll explain to her, won’t you?” Kylo Ren asked Yoda, his voice a grunt. He cleared his throat and tried for a weak joke to convince himself he wasn’t afraid: “I can’t believe I’m going to get chucked in the sea again.”  


He made his way to stand by the hole in the cavern floor. Without Luke’s illusions to hide it the hole was clear, as was the thundering sound of the waves crashing below.  


“I’m not afraid,” he yelled to Yoda defiantly. “Okay I am.” Kylo Ren balled his fists to stop his hands from shaking.  


“Yes…” Yoda murmured, his ancient eyes glittering as he faded away. “Always fear is the key.” The Jedi master’s voice hung in the air as his ghost disappeared, leaving Kylo Ren alone again.  


He looked down into the dark cavern, and for several minutes just listened to the waves smash against its cold walls.  


This was the end of his story. Looking back over his life he wondered at the choices he had made, at the paths he had taken that had led him here. Standing on the lip of that dark hole, he didn’t recognise himself. Who was he, really? If he did this for her then he was as good as handing the galaxy back to the Jedi. He was turning his back on everything he had worked for for so long.  


But none of that seemed more compelling in this moment than saving Rey.  


And Leia too. His mother. For the first time in years and years, he allowed himself to think of her as such.  


A wave of self-loathing rose up in him. Who was he kidding? He was a monster. Neither Rey nor Leia could see it. They would be far better off without him. He wouldn’t disappoint them anymore. Just this once, he could prove he wasn’t weak.  


Kylo Ren opened his eyes and took a deep breath. His terror was close under the surface, threatening to paralyse him, but he pushed it down.  


“Goodbye Rey,” he whispered, sending out a message that he hoped would penetrate her dreams without waking her.  


“This is your solution?” Rey’s voice cracked like a whip behind him. Kylo Ren whirled around and she smacked him in the face.  


He stumbled back from her wrath.  


“I wasn’t abandoning you!” he tried desperately to explain, shielding his face as she whacked him again.  


“You’re giving up!” She threw him bodily to the ground. “Coward!”  


The dark was rising in her again. Kylo Ren could feel it. He checked his impulse to retreat from her and instead braved the blows she aimed at him, grabbing hold of her and pulling her tight into his arms.  


“Please don’t turn,” he pleaded desperately. “Please don’t turn again.”  


She flung him back from her with the Force.  


“I hate that you have this power over me.” Her voice broke as she started crying. “I hate you so much.”  


“I was trying to help you,” he tried.  


“Shut up!” she yelled, clamping her hands over her ears. “Don’t hurt me anymore! Leave me alone!”  


“I’m not worth all this pain,” he told her, bracing himself in case she launched another blast of the Force at him. But his angle took her by surprise and she turned a tear stained face to him in confusion. “I’m a monster. But in this way, for you, I can be brave.” He edged closer to her.  


“Being brave means trying!” Rey snapped back bitterly. “Even though it’s hard. If you can’t face that then everything Snoke said about you is true.”  


“You’re right,” he said desperately, continuing to edge towards her. “Everything he said about me is true.” He reached out to her, and she made to fling him back again, but he caught both her wrists and held on grimly.  


“Can’t you see who I am?” he demanded. “Can’t you see what I’ve done to you? The path I walk leads to everything you hate. Just let me die Rey. Be free. Every other path destroys you.”  


“Maybe that’s my fate,” she whispered, “maybe that’s all I’m good for.” She looked into his eyes and shared a deep, deep pain. Kylo Ren’s heart almost stopped as he belatedly made a connection.  


“Rey,” he breathed. “You think you deserved to be abandoned on that planet?”  


“Maybe I did.” Tears were rolling down her face. “Why would they do it otherwise?” He drew her into his arms and held her tightly while she broke down completely. This was it, he realised. This insecurity was the root of the darkness in her. How could he not have seen this sooner?  


A path unfolded in his mind’s eye. Now he fully understood it would be so easy to twist her fears and set her on the Dark Side for good. But he set that thought aside. He had absolutely no intention of turning her.  


“I know its stupid,” she sniffed, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose.  


“It’s not stupid.” He couldn’t stop himself from keeping hold of her hand, her sleeve, her hair. He didn’t want to lose the connection, needed to show her that she wasn’t abandoned.  


“I know its not true though,” she sniffed. “But somehow it still feels true. Does that make sense?”  


“Yes.” He stroked down her back.  


“Somehow it feels a bit better though, sharing with you.” She smiled weakly. “Maybe you should try it!” Kylo Ren smiled wryly.  


“If only my path back to the Light Side was as straight forward as yours,” he observed wryly. “We’d only have needed a day on this planet.”  


“That would’ve been rubbish,” Rey smiled.  


“Yes, it would.” He drew her close and kissed her lips. He lost himself in her, in the feel of her, the smell of her, how much he wanted her. But after a moment she drew back.  


“You’ll never pull a stunt like that again,” she ordered flatly, jabbing a thumb at the cave entrance. Kylo Ren sighed.  


“Alright.” Why did she always win? “I honestly think it would be for the best though. If you change your mind then tell me.”  


“Aren’t you afraid?” she asked bluntly.  


“Of course I am!” He didn’t see any point in denying it. Rey stared at him, and an odd closed expression stole over her face.  


“I have an idea,” she announced suddenly. “Come on, let’s get away from this awful place.” When he hesitated she grabbed his hand. “You’ve had a try at sorting this mess out. Now you owe me a try.”  


He let her lead him through the dark grass, through the jagged rocks. Under the moonlight the path was clear and he sensed where she was going. Where she often went for solace, for guidance, for peace.  


On the highest peak of the island they stood together looking out over the sea as it gleamed in rolling waves of black and silver. All around them stretched a teeming profusion of living beings. All interconnected. All part of the whole.  


“You feel it don’t you?” she asked quietly. “You couldn’t when you first came here.”  


“I do,” he sighed. “But I’m not part of it like you.”  


“Do you think you could be at peace here?” Rey asked quietly. It took Kylo Ren a moment to grasp her meaning.  


“You mean, if I stay here on the island? And you go back out there?” He frowned as he peered ahead at that path. “I’ll feel you dismantling everything I have created. The First Order will crumble and the Light Side take hold again over the galaxy.”  


“And when it’s over?” Rey asked quietly.  


“And when it’s over, when there’s nothing left for us to fight over, you’ll come back. Pick me up off this rock. And we’ll fly off into the sunset together?”  


“Pretty much.” Rey smiled. “What do you think?”  


“I think I’d go mad with all the ghosts round here bugging me.” He sat down heavily on the grassy summit, trying to process the future she was suggesting.  


“And?” She sat beside him, warm against his side.  


“And I won’t be able to stand the wretched food.” Rey wrapped an arm around him.  


“And?” she whispered as he leaned into her.  


“And I would miss you desperately,” he whispered. “There’s just no point without you.” She hugged him tightly. “All of the galaxy at my feet,” he muttered, “or I give it all up and instead spend years alone on this rock, waiting for you.” He rubbed his eyes tiredly. “How about another option? We both stay here. We let the Resistance and the First Order fight it out between themselves. If the Light Side is stronger then I’ll accept that outcome, I promise. The strongest side should rule.”  


Rey frowned as she considered this path.  


“The Resistance needs me,” she said softly. “The First Order is too powerful for them to beat on their own. I can’t abandon them.”  


“No I suppose you can’t.” He sighed and gazed up at the stars. “Do you ever wonder why we found each other? Why we have this connection if we can’t be together? Destiny is playing a cruel game with us.”  


“I don’t think so.” Rey’s face was oddly blank. It reminded him of her poker face while they had played cards. “You owe me a last try,” she told him. “Your stunt in that cave nearly turned me, you owe me another chance to turn you.”  


“Please Rey,” he groaned. “Can’t you just leave it?”  


“No!” she snapped fiercely. “If Yoda hadn’t fetched me you’d be dead and I’d be turned. You owe me, Ben.”  


“Once more,” he agreed flatly. “But then that’s it. For the rest of our lives we accept we’re on opposite sides.”  


“Deal.”  


“There’d better be a picnic involved somewhere in your plan,” he grumbled. Rey just smiled smugly at him as though she knew a secret.  


“Do you remember what I said when we first came here?”  


“That Luke wouldn’t bug us?” he suggested pointedly.  


“Er. Apart from that.”  


“I wasn’t enough to turn you?” He smiled a little smugly.  


“I said that I didn’t need to try and turn you,” Rey snapped loudly. “You would turn yourself, if only I could get you to listen to your deepest instincts.”  


“Look I get it, okay?” he sighed. “All the stuff Han said to me when I was growing up. Everything I felt back then. Snoke used it. He reeled me in. And all the choices I’ve made have just sent me deeper into the dark. But knowing that doesn’t change anything. I still want to rule. I still need to be powerful. I need other people to fear me or I’m afraid myself. I can’t bear to be weak, I hate that I am, so I need to show everyone that I’m not.” This was the most honest he had ever been with himself, and saying it all out loud somehow made him realise how weak he was to let these insecurities dominate his path.  


Rey was smiling at him.  


“Don’t get your hopes up,” he sighed. “Just because I know all that now, it doesn’t change anything.”  


“Doesn’t it?” she echoed, raising an eyebrow. She was wearing her bluffing face again.  


“Let me ask you a question then,” he countered. “Why are you still so afraid of being alone? You’ve escaped that planet. You have friends now who will stand by you. You have me. But it still haunts you. That fear will pull you towards the Dark Side for the rest of your life.”  


“I guess the difference is that I don’t want my fear to rule me.”  


“Neither do I,” he sighed. “But it’s not that easy, is it.”  


“Isn’t it?” Rey asked, a knowing smile playing about her lips. “You seem to be doing okay.”  


“I feel so lost.” He dropped his head into his hands. “I’m not sure who I am anymore or what I want. I only know I can’t kill you and I can’t kill Leia.”  


“You idiot!” she laughed. “You honestly must be the very last person to realise.”  


“Realise what?” he demanded grumpily.  


She leaned across and kissed him, drew him into her arms. The bond between them burned with bright white heat. And they were on the grass, pulling off clothes, joining together. They were one and the same. Strands of darkness and light wove through them both, drawing them together, binding them to a single path. A single destiny.  


Every living being was part of him, Kylo Ren thought, part of this moment.  


“Ben,” Rey whispered, catching his face in her hand. “Don’t you understand what’s happened to you?” Kylo Ren looked into her eyes and saw reflected in them a deep truth. Wave upon wave of emotion smashed in on him as doors that had long been closed were flung open. “Welcome back,” she whispered.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Any comments and suggestions very welcome


End file.
